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TO 



A HOLY LENT. 



BY THE 

BISHOP OF CENTRAL NEW YORK. 







m 






NEW YORK: 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY, 

CHURCH PUBLISHERS, 
713 BROADWAY, 

1872. 



JS* 



^> 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

E. P. DUTTON & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



M. H. MALLOKY A CO.. 

PK1NTKKS AND KLBCTEOTTPBBS, 

HARTFOBD, CONN. 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

It has been thought by several friends that a 
little work like that which follows would be ac- 
ceptable, and of some use. The plan is very 
simple, and will be recognized at a glance. For 
each of the days, from Ash-Wednesday to Easter 
Even, a few thoughts are offered, such as might 
not otherwise come to mind, to assist the spirit- 
ual exercises of this sacred season, both by giving 
a special theme and perhaps increased freshness 
to private devotion, and by connecting the closet 
with ordinary life. 

To those who are familiar with the principles 
and history of Church-worship it will hardly be 
necessary to say that each daily portion, includ- 
ing something of Holy Scripture, meditation, 
hymn, and prayer, bears an analogy to our litur- 
gical appointments, and is a kind of faint reflection 
in miniature of the order of Divine Service. 



IV INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

In order to meet as many personal tastes and 
shades of sentiment as possible, variety lias been 
consulted as respects style and subjects, due 
regard being had to truth of doctrine. A con- 
siderable part of the pages is original. Most 
of the Collects are taken from English sources, 
though many of them are traceable to a more 
Eastern origin. Among the names of foreign 
authors from whose writings extracts have been 
made are those of Yaughan and Newman, Liddon 
and Kobertson, Pusey and Isaac Williams, Avrillon 
and Schauffler, Krummacher and Stopford Brooke, 
Goulburn and Faber, Ken and Keble, Bonar and 
Dora Greenwell. 

The book has been prepared with interest. It 

is sent out without pretension, and with the hope 

that, being received into friendly hands, it may 

make some hearts stronger and some lives more 

like the life of our Lord. 

F. D. H. 

Stkacuse, 
Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. 



HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 



^alj-toetotea&ag. 



Set your affection on things above, not on things on the 
earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in 
God. 

That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy 
Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in 
secret, shall reward thee openly. 

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto 
them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the gar- 
ment of praise for the spirit of heaviness ; that they might be 
called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He 
might be glorified. 

We are not to look on this appointment of a 
penitential season as an arrangement of our own. 
It is rather a sacred part of that divinely ordained 
system of spiritual ministries by which the Lord 
quickens the consciences and trains the holy life of 
His children. Traces of such a solemnity of forty 
days' continuance are found all along through the 



6 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

earlier and later ages of Revelation. We know 
that it was the discipline of prophets, the reveren- 
tial school of saints who lived wonderfully near to 
God. Entering once more upon it we have not 
to contrive a scheme of self-improvement without 
the guidance of the Spirit and the Bride. He 
who hallowed Lent by the Great Fast on the thresh- 
old of His mediatorial work for sinful souls 
passes into this still retirement with us. All these 
coming days and nights He will be our witness and 
our companion. The sincerity or formality of our 
special observances will be known to Him. Our 
self-denials He will share. The vows we make 
will be recorded in His book of remembrance. As 
the Gospel for last Sunday told us, " Jesus of Naz- 
areth passeth by." The cry of our blindness and 
our weakness will not need to travel far to reach 
His ear, nor will He ever rebuke it, either for its 
ignorance or its importunity. It is with Him we 
are to walk^all the way going up to Jerusalem. 

There is one kind of suffering which we are not 
simply to accept and bear ; we are to ordain the 
pain for ourselves, to go after it, to pray that it 
may be made keener than it is. This is penitence. 
If we do not know what that sorrow is, we are so 



ASH-WEDNESDAY. 7 

much farther from true peace. It is because we 
have been living only on the surface of life, un- 
mindful of its deeper realities, not seeing its grander 
glories. Both Christ and His forerunner, when 
they began to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom 
to the world, uttered one sharp, piercing call: 
" Repent ! " They did not always go into minute 
specifications of every shade of sin, for they knew 
that they had for a witness a conscience in every 
breast, each heart knowing its own plague. They 
knew that there is always one comprehensive 
iniquity lodged farther in and spreading wider 
than any particular offence, — the sin of separation 
from God. In order to hate that the more heartily 
we must see it as it is, think about it, study its 
nature and workings, disentangle its sophistries 
and delusions, and appreciate the wretched comfort 
it gives to the adversary. Ashes must be sprinkled 
first before the ugliness in us can be changed to 
spiritual beauty. How significant the image is! 
Ashes are what is left when the fire is burnt out. 
They are bitter ; worse than tasteless. They are 
pale. They are the sign of humiliation. No gar- 
ment of praise can be put on till this spirit of 
heaviness has first wrapped its sackcloth about us. 



8 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Coming once more to the beginning of this gra- 
cious period we ought, first of all, to put away all 
superficial thoughts and all flippant conventional 
language about it. Do not trust to vague general 
intentions; — in the observance they will come to 
nothing, leaving only ashes in your mouth. Have 
a plan which you are not ashamed to own, and 
which you will probably be able to carry steadily 
through. So far as all arrangements of time and 
place and household are at your command, without 
wronging or disobliging others, make them yield 
to that plan. It is of less importance just what 
form your self-denial takes, than that it take some 
distinct form which you can define and present to 
your own mind. See that the Cross is really laid 
on somewhere. Nothing that you cut off from 
self-gratification for your Saviour's sake will you 
ever regret or wish to take back. Choose out, if 
you can, the weakest point. There is appetite in 
its several importunities ; there is the passion for 
dress ; there is idleness ; there is the sin of evil 
speaking, in fact, all the foul brood of the trans- 
gressions of the tongue ; there is bad temper ; 
there is the lack of courage in manifesting your 
Christian convictions and bearing open witness; 



ASH-WEDNESDAY. 9 

there is the hurrying or forgetfulness of prayers ; 
there is too little intercession ; there is idolatry of 
the objects of human love ; there is pride ; there is 
the self-seeking or self-pleading that creeps even 
into your works of charity. Sprinkle the ashes 
where the moral deformity or disorder is most 
cunningly concealed, that the flesh of the inner 
man may come again like the flesh of a little child. 
Dismiss at once from the mind, and keep out of it, 
any notion that your sacrifices or repentances are 
to be reckoned to you as merits, or can furnish any 
ground for your justification. They are meant to 
bring your soul into that repentant, lowly, and 
teachable frame, where He who alone justifieth can 
set His healing and redeeming power more faith- 
fully at work. They cleanse the vision ; they open 
the door ; they drive the tempter away, inviting 
in that heavenly Guest who stands now and knocks 
with patient solicitation, and who, once bidden 
by a sorrowing and self-renouncing faith to come 
in, abideth ever. 

Once more the solemn season calls 

A holy fast to keep ; 
And now within the sacred walls 

Let priest and people weep. 



10 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

But not in tears and fast alone 

Let penitence appear ; 
By holier life and love be shown 

That penitence sincere. 

POUR into onr hearts, Lord, we beseech Thee, the grace 
of penitence, prayer, and lowliness, that, mortifying the 
flesh and living by the Spirit, and always meditating on 
heavenly things, we may think meanly of ourselves, and ever 
find our rest and glory in Thee alone, who livest and reignest 
with the Father and the Holy Ghost one God, world without 
end. Amen. 



JTket ®f)ur0&ag. 



Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the Most High, shall 
abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He shall defend 
thee under His wings, and thou shall be safe under His 
feathers. His faithfulness and truth shall be thy shield and 
buckler. 

"We are entering upon that solemn season of the 
year when for a time we separate from each other 
as far as may be, and from the other blessings 
which God has given us. Like Moses, we have 
gone up into the mount to remain there forty days 
and forty nights in abstinence and prayer. We 
are called, as it were, out of sight ; for though our 
worldly duties remain and must be done, and our 
bodily presence is in the world as it was, yet for 
a time we must be more or less cut off from the 
intercourse, the fellowship, the enjoyment, of each 
other, and be thrown upon the thought of our- 
selves and of our God. Earth must fade away 
from our eyes, and we must anticipate that great 
and solemn truth which we shall not fully under- 



12 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

stand until we stand before God in judgment ; 
that to us there are but two beings in the whole 
world, — God and ourselves. The sympathy of 
others, the pleasant voice, the glad eye, the smiling 
countenance, the thrilling heart, which at present 
are our very life, — all will be away from us when 
Christ comes in judgment. Every one will have to 
think of himself. Every eye shall see Him / every 
heart will be full of Him. He will speak to every 
one ; and every one will be rendering to Him his 
own account. By self-restraint, by abstinence, by 
prayer, by meditation, by recollection, we now an- 
ticipate in our measure that dreadful season. Let 
us not shrink from this necessary work ; let us not 
suffer indolence or casual habits to get the better 
of us. Let us not yield to disgust or impatience ; 
let us not fear as we enter the cloud. Let us recol- 
lect that it is His cloud which overshadows us. It 
is no earthly sorrow or pain, such as worketh death ; 
but it is a bright cloud of godly sorrow, " working 
repentance to salvation not to be repented of." 

Forty days and forty nights 
Thou wast fasting in the wild ; 

Forty days and forty nights 
Tempted, and yet undenled. 



FIRST THURSDAY. 13 

Sunbeams scorching all the day ; 

Chilly drew-drops nightly shed ; 
Prowling beasts about Thy way ; 

Stones Thy pillow ; earth Thy bed. 
Shall not we Thy sorrows share, 

And from earthly joys abstain, 
Fasting still with instant prayer, 

Glad with Thee to suffer pain ? 

OKING of heaven and earth, rich in mercy ! behold we are 
poor and needy. Thou knowest how greatly we are in 
need, and thou alone art able to help and enrich us. O Lord, 
look graciously upon us, and from the treasures of Thy good- 
ness succor the poverty of our souls, through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. Amen. 



JFirst jFrtocts. 



Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to 
enter into His glory ? 

We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom 
of God. 

I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter. 

Jeremiah speaks literally, in his own person as 
an individual, of the persecutions he endured ; 
but, as a prophet, he speaks of Jesus Christ, who is 
that Lamb sacrificed in types, from the beginning 
of the world, in innocent Abel, and afterward in 
the Paschal Lamb, and in all the sacrifices of 
lambs which were commanded by the Law ; but 
the real Lamb is the Lamb pointed out by John 
Baptist to his disciples, when he said: "Behold 
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of 
the world." 

Behold, then, this mild and patient Lamb about 
to be led to death because He so loved us as to 
take our sins on Himself that He might bear the 



FIRST FRIDAY. 15 

punishment of them. That Lamb, who is God, is 
going to make on the Cross a wonderful union 
of two qualities, hitherto separate ; that is to say, 
He will be both the priest and the victim. As a 
victim, He will pay our debts ; as a priest, He will 
offer the one great and only sacrifice of our religion. 
The Cross will be # the altar and the bloody cradle 
in which all the faithful will be born, and the firm 
foundation which will support the whole edifice of 
Christianity. Thence it comes that this Christian- 
ity has only been established in the world by suffer- 
ings, and it can only be established and supported 
in our souls by them ; and it is for us, says St. Paul, 
to see how we shall build on this foundation by 
following the bleeding steps of the suffering Jesus. 
If you have ever seriously reflected on God's con- 
duct toward you, you will see that, when you have 
strayed from the right path, it was by suffering 
that God brought you back again to the religion 
which prosperity had made you forget. In short, 
we then feel constrained to raise our eyes to 
heaven, we call upon the Lord ; grace acts on our 
souls; we begin to feel that these sufferings were 
necessary to retrace in our hearts the almost effaced 
characters of the divine image. We see the ex- 



16 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

treme weakness of the creature, to whom we had 
recourse in the beginning of our troubles, and, con- 
vinced of the weakness of this resource, which at 
the most has only given us some fruitless consola- 
tion which did not free us from suffering, we turn 
to God, and, invoking Him with all our heart, we 
find in Him all that we desired, and we feel con- 
strained to say, with the prophet : " Before I was 
afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept Thy 
Word. It is good for me that I have been afflicted ; 
that I might learn Thy statutes." 

Our faith would lay its hand 

On that dear head of Thine. 
O Lamb of God, we stand 

And there confess our sin. 
Oft look we back to see 

The burdens Thou didst bear 
When hanging on the cruel Tree, 

And trust our guilt was there. 

ALMIGHTY Lord, hear our prayers, grant our petitions 
in this time of grace and penitence ; enable us to per- 
form our religious duties with all the exactitude and rever- 
ence of which we are capable, and grant that the fasts conse- 
crated by the example and precepts of Thy adorable Son may 
be pleasing in Thy sight, and may we finally obtain glory ever- 
lasting. And this we beg through the merits and mediation 
of Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord. Amen. 



JFtrst 0atttrt>a]3. 



Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy- 
nation, a peculiar people ; that ye should show forth the 
praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His 
marvellous light. 

Of the whole Christian year, let me say that to 
live in it, and by it, is the best way of serving the 
Lord. Keep these days. If yon cannot leave off 
your work on all of them, never mind, so you hal- 
low them at least in your heart. O children of the 
Church ! live in the Church, love her holy ways, 
walk in her paths of peace, look not beyond. You 
have naught to do with those who are without, but 
to treat them kindly, do good to them, and pray 
for them. In the Holy Catholic Church you have 
your portion ; be content ; give God thanks ; be 
at rest. Live by the Bible and the Prayer Book. 
Begin each day with prayer; go forth to your 
work and to your labor until the evening ; lie 



18 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

down with the eye of Jesus looking upon you, and 
the holy angels watching around. Do good in your 
time. Be sober, industrious, true, honest, kind. 
Fulfil your course. Lay hold on all the helps 
which the Lord puts within your reach to bring 
you to heaven. So shall your walk be close with 
God ; so shall you at length rest in Him with the 
blessing of the Holy Church upon your grave ; 
so shall you wake in the last great morning, to rise 
and go to your Father's House; to be brought 
close to that Lord of whose body you are a mem- 
ber, and from whose side you will never be parted ; 
to inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
beginning of the world. 

Thus everywhere we find our suffering God, 

And where He trod 
May set our steps : the Cross an Calvary 

Uplifted high 
Beams on the martyr host, a beacon light 

In open fight. 

To the still wrestlings of the lonely heart 

He doth impart 
The virtue of His midnight agony 

When none was nigh, 
Save God and one good angel, to assuage 

The tempter's rage. 



FIRST SATURDAY. 19 

JESUS, our Master, do Thou meet us while we walk in the 
way, and long to reach the Heavenly Country, so that, 
following Thy light, we may keep the way of righteousness, 
and never wander away into the horrible darkness of this 
world's night, while Thou, who art the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life, art shining within us. Amen. 



jFiret 0«n5ag. 



The Lord send thee help from the Sanctuary and strengthen 
thee out of Sion. 

And He said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a 
desert place and rest awhile, for there were many coming 
and going. 

It brings our Lord in His humanity very near to 
us to find Him disturbed by the confusion of a 
crowd, and, while the weight of the whole spiritual 
creation rests perpetually on His heart, seeking 
rest from the world by an hour's retirement. There 
is at the same time a very beautiful disclosure of 
the tender thoughtfulness of His sympathy with 
His followers. His disciples have been busily toil- 
ing on His errands. He bids them come and learn 
something of His moments of rest. Come, He 
says, into this healing air of solitude. By a more 
intimate communion with Me alone gain a clearer 
comprehension of the great work of your life and 



FIRST SUNDAY. 21 

of the peace which is its only reward, of the Cross 
you must daily bear, and the secret consciousness 
of Divine love which makes that Cross light. The 
Saviour appears to have been especially apt to go 
away alone at periods of peculiar difficulty, as if 
the girding up of His mind for the holiest acts of 
sacrifice could best be done apart from all mortal 
society. Having not where to lay His head He 
made the border of the desert His closet, or the 
mountain-top His sanctuary, watching unto prayer 
all night, wrestling for the world's salvation while 
the world slept, unmindful even of its need to be 
saved. In the spiritual history of men it is re- 
markable how often the commanding spirits that 
have done most to bless their fellows, and reform 
their age, have drawn their inward strength from 
above in such seasons of seclusion. Solitude is the 
Divinely appointed refuge of penitence, of self- 
examination, of holy resolutions yet new and 
feeble, of prayer. It is a means of grace ; Chris- 
tian character rarely obtains its heavenly flavor 
without it. When the Twelve withdrew from 
where many were coming and going, and did so at 
His invitation, they went deeper down than before 
into the realities of the Divine life, because, to 



22 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

speak as we do of our human intercourse, they had 
the Master all to themselves. 

The expression, " Many were coming and going 
and there was no leisure/' is strikingly descriptive 
of our times. We are hurrying on with a fast- 
living and outward-living generation, in a self- 
indulgent, showy, noisy age. The Church never 
needed the doctrine of religious stillness and retire- 
ment more than now. But the Church is made up 
of individuals, and I am among them. My loyalty 
to its honor, my independence of the tyranny of 
fashion, my cleanness from all the doubtful usages 
and social defilements by which I am tempted 
every day, my personal faithfulness to Christ, will 
be in proportion to the use I make of the seasons 
when I am apart with Him. 

Many a dreary sunset, many a dreary dawn, 

We had watched upon those desert hills as we pressed slowly 
on. 

Yet sweet had been the silent dews which from God's presence 

. fell, 

And the still hours of resting, by palm-tree and by well, 

Till we pitched our tent at last — the desert done — 

Where we saw the hills of the Holy Land gleam in the sink- 
ing sun. 



FIRST SUNDAY. 23 

OLORD, may our souls perceive the sweetness of Thy pres- 
ence. May they taste and see how gracious Thou art, 
that, filled with Thy love, they may seek nothing out of Thee 
wherein to rejoice ; for Thou, O Lord, art the joy of our heart. 
and our portion forever. Amen. 



Jfir0t Jttonfcag. 



And Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty 
nights. And it came to pass when he came down from Mount 
Sinai with the two tables of testimony in his hand, that 
Moses wist not that his face shone. 

And as they came down from the mountain, he charged 
them that they should tell no man what things they had seen 
till the Son of Man were risen from the dead. And when He 
came to His disciples, He saw a great multitude about them, 
and the Scribes questioning with them ; and straightway all 
the people when they beheld Him were greatly amazed, and 
running to Him, saluted Him. 

Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. 

If the way of faith and prayer runs from society 
to solitude, we must remember that the way of 
charitable work runs back from seclusion to society. 
In the perfect life of the Son of God this alterna- 
tion is constant between seclusion and service, still- 
ness and activity. We learn from it the law of our 
own religious growth. Precious as the periods of 
refreshment are, they are after all but temporary. 



FIRST MONDAY. 25 

They are intervals of useful labor, not substitutes 
for it. Separation from men may possibly be 
sought for owing to morbid moods, and it may 
create them. Like other means of grace, religious 
retirement has its peculiar temptations, — pride, un- 
healthy introspection, indolence, disparagement of 
other men. Accordingly, the real value of going 
apart into solitary places must be tested by the 
spirit with which we return from them into the 
ordinary engagements of our households and the 
world. 

Lents, holy days, communions, special hours of 
unwonted elevation, must all be tried by that 
practical criterion. They are scattered along the 
Christian's road, Elims in his desert, banqueting- 
houses upon his march, to make the common time 
more sacred, the required work better done. The 
Church herself has to take her turn in lonely spots, 
sometimes in humiliation, persecution, and pov- 
erty; and it is in order that the Bride may be 
brought back to the Bridegroom more faithful in 
her love, more abundant in her sacrifice. " There- 
fore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into 
the wilderness and speak comfortably unto her. 
And I will give her her vineyards from thence, 



26 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

the Yalley of Achor for a door of hope, and she 
shall sing there as in the days of her youth." Most 
of our time must be spent in the vineyards where 
we dig and prune. All rest is for the sake of that 
toil. The Sabbath is for man ; the forty days are 
ordained to touch all days with a new sanctity. 
Our closets open from the places where men come 
and go. Something in our very prayers will be 
wrong unless we pass from them into the daily 
ministrations and drudgeries with more patience, 
more self-surrender, a kindlier forbearance with 
the infirmities of those around us, and a heartier 
effort to yield our interests to thiers for the Ee- 
deemer's sake. Our yery rests will be unrefresh- 
ing without Him, and He only makes the retire- 
ment sacred, and society safe. 

Come, labor on : 
Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain, 
While all around him waves the golden grain, 
And every servant hears the Master say : 
" Go work to-day ? " 

Come, labor on : 
No time for rest, till glows the western sky 
While the long shadows o'er our pathway lie, 
And a glad sound comes with the setting sun : 
" Servants, well done ! " 



FERST MONDAY. 27 

OLORD Jesus Christ, who hast declared that when we have 
done all that is commanded us, we are still unprofitable 
servants ; give us grace so to fix our eyes on Thy most pure 
and holy life, that we may know our own impurity and sin, 
and seek in all humility to be conformed unto Thy will, Who 
livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost one 
God, world without end. Amen. 



jfrcst ©tteafcag. 



Be careful for nothing ; but in everything by prayer and 
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made 
known unto God. 

There is many a Christian who reaches nothing 
more than this (nay, who aims at nothing more), that 
devotion shall have its little hour in the day, and 
business its long hours ; and great is his complacency 
if the business hours are not allowed to trench upon 
the hour of devotion. I am not saying anything 
against stated periods of devotion ; they are abso- 
lutely essential, and it is only too certain that, in 
the absence of stated periods, the spirit of devotion 
would evaporate altogether. But I am saying that 
the soul will never taste a full satisfaction until it 
has learned more or less to mix devotion with work. 
The soul must not leave God for an instant if it is 
to be perfectly joyous and contented. Let it take 
but a step away from Him, and it is at once in a 



FIRST TUESDAY. 29 

region of excitement and unrest, and so far forth,, 
of danger. Remember that the New Testament 
teaching makes unbroken communion with God 
obligatory upon us. It names no seasons for 
prayer, or rather it names every season. "Pray 
without ceasing." My friend, I do not ask whether 
you have completely acquired the habit of inter- 
penetrating your daily employments with the spirit ■ 
of devotion (that is the case with none of us, least 
of all, probably, with the present writer); but 
are you placing this before you as your standard, 
and sincerely trying to reach it ? Ejaculatory 
prayer is the great means of reaching it. Do you 
ever use ejaculatory prayer ? Do you ever lift up 
your heart to God in the midst of your work, pray- 
ing Him to shield you from temptation, to bless you 
in what you are doing, and, at all events, not to let 
you wander very far from His side ? Do not say it 
is impossible ; for to this and no lower standard you 
are called, both by the constitution of your nature 
and by the precept, " Pray without ceasing ; " and, 
by the grace of God, all things which He com- 
mands are possible. You will say, perhaps, " I try 
to keep my mind continually in the right track ; 
but, alas ! it is thrown off its balance a thousand 



30 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

times a day by having to do things in a hurry and 
against time ; by a warm conversation ; by a piece 
of interesting news ; by domestic worries and cares ; 
by little rubs of the temper." So it is most truly. 
The mind wants steadying and setting right many 
times a day. It resembles a compass placed on a 
rickety table ; the least stir of the table makes the 
needle swing around and point untrue. Let it settle, 
then, till it points aright. Be perfectly silent for a 
few moments, thinking of Jesus ; there is an almost 
Divine force in silence. Drop the thing that wor- 
ries, that excites, that interests, that thwarts you ; 
let it fall like a sediment to the bottom, until the 
soul is no longer turbid ; and say secretly : " Grant, 
I beseech Thee, merciful Lord, to Thy faithful ser- 
vant pardon and peace; that I may be cleansed 
from all my sins, and serve Thee with a qidetmind" 

The crowd of cares, the weightiest cross, 

Seem trifles less than light ; 
Earth looks so little and so low, 

When faith shines full and bright. 

OLOKD of pity, who wiliest naught but good, leave me not 
to walk in mine own will ; but overrule me to act at all 
times according to Thy will, which is always good. And have 
mercy on Thy creatures, and on me a great sinner ; through 
Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen. 



0e(on5 toe&nes&ctg. 



Let us humble ourselves therefore under the mighty hand 
of God, that He may exalt us in due time. 

Without humility religious progress is impossible. 
Pride is the destruction of the principle of progress ; 
it whispers to us continually that we are all that 
could be desired, or it points our attention to high 
positions and ambitious efforts beyond the scope of 
other men. Yet the true growth of the soul is not 
to be measured by our attempting many extraor- 
dinary duties, but by our power of doing simple 
duties well; and humility, when it reigns in the 
soul, carries this principle into practice. It bids us 
hallow our work, especially whatever may be to us 
hard or distasteful work, by doing it as a matter of 
principle. It bids us, when on our knees, use sim- 
ple prayers. We do well to retain the very prayers 
which we used as children, however we may add to 



32 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

them ; and to throw bur whole soul into each sepa- 
rate clause and word. It enriches common acts of 
neighborly and social kindness with that intensity 
of moral effort which is due to every act of which 
the deepest moving power is the love of God. 
Without humility, no soul that has turned to God 
and is learning to serve Him, is for a moment safe. 
The whole life of the living soul is the work of 
Divine grace ; and while pride claims merit for 
self, and therefore goes before a fall, humility con- 
fesses, day by day, " By the grace of God I am what 
I am." The higher you climb the mountain side, 
the more fatal must be your fall, if you do fall : if 
you would look over the giddy precipice without 
risk, you must first stoop to lay firm hold on the rock 
of humility. For humility is the condition and 
guarantee of grace; and, as St. Augustine says, 
there is no reason, apart from the grace of God, 
why the highest saint should not be the worst of 
criminals. 

Thy breast to beat, thy clothes to rend, 

God asketh not of Thee ; 
Thy stubborn soul He bids thee bend 

In true humility. 



SECOND WEDNESDAY. 33 

O let us then, with heartfelt grief, 

Draw nearer unto God, 
And pray that He will grant relief, 

Will stay the lifted rod. 

GRANT, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the true fruit of repent- 
ance to those who have wandered out of the way through 
sin, that they may obtain pardon for their offences, and be 
restored cleansed to Thy Holy Church ; through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. Amen. 

a 



0earni> $t)ttr0&aB. 



Jesus answered and said unto her, O Woman, great is thy 
faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt. 

And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we 
ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. 

Pray modestly as to the things of this life ; ear- 
nestly for what may be helps to your salvation ; 
intensely for salvation itself, that you may forever 
behold God, love God. 

Cleanse your heart now : for " the pure in heart 
shall see God." 

Be alone with God, that your soul may be free to 
speak to Him, and to hear Him. But be alone in 
your inmost hearts, shutting out busy, anxious 
thoughts, that they throng not in with the prayers, 
and cloud not the sight and thought of God. 

Practise in life whatever thou prayest for, and 
God will give it thee more abundantly. 



SECOND THUBSDAY. 35 

Bear patiently and humbly all daily crosses, con- 
tradictions, rebukes, and whatsoever is against thine 
own will. They will conform thee to the mind of 
God, be channels of grace which will cleanse thy 
soul for yet further grace. 

Deny thyself things earthly, if thou wouldest 
taste the sweetness of things heavenly. 

Above all things, persevere in prayer. Many 
begin well ; many hold on for a time well ; many 
pray well from time to time ; some, alas ! can even 
work themselves up from time to time to think they 
pray well, and to feel what they pray ; many begin 
again and again well. Few persevere ; for few 
they be who find the straight gate and narrow way 
which leadeth unto life. 

If thou hast begun, pray that thou mayest pray 
better. If thou hast failed, pray to begin again, and 
to persevere. All who pray to persevere gain 
what they pray for. None who so prayed has 
perished. 

We need as much the Cross we bear, 
As air we breathe, as light we see, — 

It draws us to Thy side in prayer, 
It binds us to our strength in Thee. 



36 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

ALMIGHTY God, help Thou our weakness, and because we 
can neither perform nor even pray for what is right of our 
selves as of ourselves, arouse by Thy Holy Spirit in our hearts 
groanings of prayer which cannot be uttered, that by Thy 
loving kindness there may be given unto us both the will to 
ask and the power to accomplish what is well pleasing unto 
Thee ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



0earn& irtoag. 



After that He poureth water into a bason, and began to wash 
the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith 
He was girded. Then cometh He to Simon Peter : and Peter 
saith unto Him, Lord, dost Thou wash my feet ? Jesus an- 
swered and said unto Him, What I do thou knowest not now ; 
but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto Him, Thou 
shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash 
thee not, thou hast no part with Me. Simon Peter saith unto 
Him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. 
Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash 
his feet, but is clean every whit. 

" Thou shalt never wash my feet," said the mis- 
taken disciple. But listen to the Saviour's reply : 
" If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me." 
What an important declaration is this ! You per- 
ceive how the more profound and mystic meaning 
of our Lord's act shines forth in these words, — 
namely, as having reference to the blood of atone- 
ment, to forgiveness, justification, and purification 
from sin. How much lies concealed in this passage, 



38 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

and how every syllable lias its profound signifi- 
cation ! " If /wash thee not." Yes, Thou, Lord 
Jesus, must do it ; for who ever purified himself 
from sin ? " If I do not wash thee." Yes, Thou 
must wash us ; for teaching, instructing, and setting 
us an example is not sufficient. " If I wash thee 
not." Certainly, what does it avail me if Peter or 
Paul is cleansed, and I remain defiled ? I must be 
forgiven, and feel that I am absolved; and it re- 
mains eternally true, that he who is not washed in 
the blood of Christ has no part with Him, nor in the 
blessings of His kingdom. 

What is wont to happen in the progress of the 
life of faith ? Unguarded moments occur, in which 
the man again sins in one way or other. He in- 
cautiously thinks, speaks, or does that which is 
improper, and is again guilty of unfaithfulness, 
although against his will ; for only the devil and his 
seed sin wilfully : while he that is born of God, 
saith the Apostle, cannot sin. The man's walk is 
polluted ; his feet, with which he comes in contact 
with the earth, are defiled. What is now to be 
done? First, beware of despondency, by which 
we only prepare a feast for Satan. Next, withdraw 
not from the presence of the Lord, as if his heart 



SECOND FRIDAY. 39 

were closed against us. Thirdly, think not that it 
is necessary to make a fresh beginning of a religious 
life. The seed of the new birth remains within U6 ; 
and the child of the family of God is not suddenly 
turned out of doors, like a servant or a stranger. 
"He that is washed," says our Lord, "is clean 
every whit : and ye are clean, but not all." Who 
does not now understand this speech ? Its meaning 
is, He that is become a partaker of the blood of 
sprinkling, and of the baptism of the Spirit — that is, 
of the twofold grace of absolution from the guilt of 
sin and of regeneration to newness of life — is, as 
regards the inmost germ of his being, a thoroughly 
new man, who has eternally renounced sin, and 
whose inmost love, desire, and intention is directed 
to God and things Divine. Where such a one, 
from weakness, is overtaken by a fault, he has no 
need of an entirely new transformation, but only of 
a cleansing. He must let his feet be washed. Let 
this be duly considered by those who are in a state of 
grace, and let them resist the infernal accuser, lest 
he gain an advantage over them by his boundless 
accusations. Hold up the blood of the Lamb as a 
shield against him, and do not suffer your courage 
and confidence to be shaken. 



40 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

When penitence has wept in vain 

Over some foul dark spot, 
One only stream, a stream of blood, 

Can wash away the blot. 

'Tis Jesus' blood that washes white, 

His Hand that brings relief, 
His heart that's touched with all our joys, 

And feeleth for our grief. 

A THOU who seest everything! I have sinned against 
Thee in thought, word, and deed. Blot out the hand- 
writing of my trespasses, and write my name in the Book of 
Life. And have mercy on Thy creatures, and on me a great 
sinner ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



0tfon& 0atttr&ag. 



Ye see your calling. 

Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and 
Christ shall give thee light. 

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools but as 
wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 

Added time and added light make men worse 
unless they make them better. Old sinners are 
wickeder than young, and the world grows older. 
It is in the power of these last times, if they will, 
to sin more guiltily, and to scoff more blasphemous- 
ly, than any earlier and less instructed century 
could. Each period, till the Lord comes again, de- 
mands a more circumspect obedience, and only 
sinks to a deeper disgrace if it is hollow in its pro- 
fessions or worldly in its life. 

You say you have no responsibility for these 
vast streams of sin. Is that true? The weakest 
and youngest among us is answerable for a single 
life, to see that it is outwardly circumspect, and 



42 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

inwardly grafted into the life of the Son of God. 
These currents of evil are made up, every drop, 
of single lives. Let yours be right before God, — 
then your family, your acquaintances, all that you 
will have to answer for at the Judgment, will feel 
it, and be the better for it. That is what St. Paul 
means. That holy life of yours will go so far to 
redeem the time, and He who died to redeem both 
you and the world will accept you as one of His own. 

We come, then, to the question, what ought the 
degree of a Christian's consecration to be in the 
world nowadays, and in a community like this 
where we live ? How distinct ought the stamp of 
our Christian calling to be % How far ought the 
Christian man and the Christian woman and the 
Christian youth to be set apart, and stand alone ? 

There is but one answer, provided we seek the 
answer in the Word of God, where only we can 
find one in which we can safely rest. The form 
of the ordinary occupations of the holy man and 
the worldly man will not generally be very unlike, 
because the necessities of an outward livelihood are 
much the same, and it is not meant that, in this 
life, God's people and the world's should be out- 
wardly separated ; that separation is to come here- 



SECOND SATURDAY. 43 

after. But at this point their common life and 
their resemblance end. In the secret affections 
that prompt his spirit and govern his plans, 
his business, his amusements, his use of property 
and his tongue, the disciple of Christ is to show 
himself called by a distinct and peculiar calling. 
He is to stand so apart, in all these respects, that 
every observer of him is to take knowledge that he 
not only has been with Jesus, but that, there being 
two armies always, he belongs now to the one and 
not to the other. Every year, as the confirmation 
season comes round, and one and another of those 
that are invited to make their confession of Christ 
before men excuse themselves. No excuse is so com- 
mon as this : " I wish I were a true Christian ; I 
hope some time or other to be one, and a consistent 
one ; but I do not want to be another of those that I 
see too often, who say that they renounce this world 
for Christ, but alter nothing in their frivolity, 
or their passion for pleasure, dress, and gain, and 
with whom the only movement that distinguishes 
them from the most thoughtless is when they go, 
once a month, to take the Communion." Too great 
a work is on our hands, too solemn responsibilities 
are pressing, too great and glorious a Leader is look- 



44 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

ing at us and calling us, for this wretched trifling, 
which makes the Church look like the market and 
the ball-room, only ten times worse, for the incon- 
sistency of its professions and the hollowness of 
its prayers. I say to you, as an English layman 
says : " If your life were but a fever-fit, the mad- 
ness of a night, whose follies were all to be forgot- 
ten in the dawn, it might matter little how you 
fretted away the sickly hours ; what toys you 
snatched at, or let fall ; what visions you followed 
with the deceived eyes of your frenzy. Dance if 
you will on the floor of hospital wards ; knit the 
straw into what crowns please you ; gather the dust 
of it for treasure, clutching at the black motes in the 
air with your dying hands." But the delirium of 
thousands that live and die along these streets is a 
thousand times sadder than that, because the brain 
still keeps its accountability, and judgment is to 
come. Oh, you who bear the name of Christians, 
baptized and " chosen " to represent your Lord 
before men, gird up the loins of your mind. It 
will cost self-denial. It will bring on you the 
wonder, the criticism, the sarcasm, perhaps, of your 
social set. What then ? For fifteen centuries 
Christendom has handed down with admiration 



SECOND SATURDAY. 45 

the brave word of one of the Church's true priests, 
— " Athanasius against the world ! " Why should 
we have to go back so far to find our saints, when 
there is the same opportunity, the same duty for 
every disciple to stand against the social threat 
and flattery that are all the world to him? The 
girded loins, the sober mind, the unworldly walk — 
and the solitude of spirit if need be — shall we not 
cheerfully meet them, and resolutely take them up, 
for that glory that is to be revealed ? 

Tis not for man to trifle : life is brief, 

And sin is here : 
Our age is but the falling of a leaf, 

A dropping tear. 
We have no time to sport the hours away : 
We must be working while 'tis called to-day. 

O day of time, how dark ! O sky and earth, 

How dull your hue ! 
O day of Christ, how bright ! O sky and earth 

Made fair and new ! 
Come, better Eden, with thy fresher green ; 
Come, brighter Salem, gladden all the scene. 

A GOD, who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, mer- 
cifuUy grant unto us such a sense of sin that we may 
receive cleansing, and such cleansing that we may be made 
pure in heart, and may see Thee for evermore ; through our 
Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. 



Qctonb Sun&aj). 



Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
within me. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

In contending against sensual sins, the main 
stress must be laid on the principle of exclusion, 
— the absolute keeping away of bad suggestions 
and imagery from the mind. Once in, the stain 
has struck on a substance so sensitive that, if not 
quite indelible, it is still terribly tenacious and 
terribly prolific of sorrow. It is here, with begin- 
nings, that we all have chiefly to do, in ourselves 
and our children. Here, peculiarly, the battle is 
secret and invisible. Not much can be said, and 
so the more must be done by prayer and instan- 
taneous self-command, expelling the first contami- 
nation, and crying : " Cleanse Thou me from secret 
faults." In respect to many sins, self-examination 



SECOND SUNDAY. 47 

may be safe and even necessary ; but there are 
others where it is scarcely wholesome or profitable. 
Simple prevention, avoidance, the shutting of the 
eyes and ears, and pressing on to known duty, are 
the best security. It does not help much to go 
back and trace the ways of temptation. The wise 
man was right : " Avoid it ; pass not by it ; turn 
from it and pass away." "Lead us not into 
temptation." One wrong companionship in child- 
hood, one unprincipled servant or schoolmate, one 
Mephistophiles using the advantages of superior 
station or intellect, may spread a curse through the 
whole hidden history of fourscore years. Next to 
bad companionship is a bad literature. The degen- 
eracy of the public modesty, in the reading allowed 
without stint to the young, is a direct contradiction 
to both the profession and the fact of a progressive 
civilization. Books that are the products of a 
thoroughly unchristian social life, in both Europe 
and America, not only famish the continual reading 
reserve of the reckless and abandoned, but they stock 
the circulating libraries, and lie on the tables of the 
best-bred families, within reach of young persons 
from whose bodies and physical health every breath 
of outward malaria is warded off with incessant 



48 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

vigilance and at every cost. The harm falls just 
where the liability to harm is greatest, — on the 
springs of thought, imagination, emotion, where no 
direct effort can meet it or detect its inroads. 

Best of all the protections against these impuri- 
ties, however, after the prayer that entreats, in all 
the varying utterances of an intense devotion — 
" Create in me a clean heart, O God " — is inces- 
sant Christian occupation, with abstinence from 
those personal luxuries, idlenesses, and pamperings 
of the body, which are the preparations and provo- 
catives of temptation. To turn swiftly and vigor- 
ously to some generous and righteous errand for 
the Master with a temperate and well-governed 
body, under a healthful regimen, and sometimes, 
perhaps, to make the body bear voluntary penal- 
ties for its errors, so as thereby to remind and regu- 
late the soul, but at any rate to keep the thoughts 
and energies preoccupied, is the true mode of 
preserving Christian purity, and even of restoring 
it after it has been lost. 

We must not fail to lift up our eyes toward the 
Seat of Mercy. "What are these which are ar- 
rayed in white robes? These are they which 
have washed their robes and made them white in 



SECOND SUNDAY. 49 

the Blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before 
the throne of God," serving Him face to face and 
heart to heart with the glorious angels that never 
sinned, seeing God. There is Love, Redemption, 
Forgiveness, and at last, the Beatific Vision, even 
for sinful hearts like ours. 

A poet of few poems has written these verses, 
embodying the encouraging thought that, though 
the unfallen spirits excel in power and might, 
there is yet a singular blessedness belonging to 
those children of the Redemption who have known, 
often the wretchedness of impurity, the relief of 
repentance, and the rest of reconciliation : 

Earth has one joy unknown in heaven, — 
The new-born peace of sin forgiven. 
Tears of such pure and deep delight ; 
Ye angels ! never dimmed your sight ! 

Ye saw, of old, on Chaos rise 
The beauteous pillars of the skies : 
Ye know where morn exulting springs 
And evening folds her drooping wings. 

Bright heralds of the Eternal Will, 
Abroad His errands ye fulfil, 
Or, throned in floods of beaming day 
Symphonious in His presence play ; 



50 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

While I amid your choirs shall shine, 
And all your knowledge will be mine, 
Ye on your harps must lean to hear 
One secret chord that mine will bear. 

CLEANSE us, O Lord, from our secret faults, and mercifully 
absolve-us from our presumptuous sins, that we may re- 
ceive Thy holy things with a pure mind ; through Christ our 
Lord. Amen. 



0eronb Jtton&aj). 



I meditate on all Thy works ; I muse on the work of Thy 
hands. 

O how love I Thy law ! it is my meditation all the day. 

Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her 
heart. 

Meditation is partly passive, partly an active 
state. Who ever has pondered long over a plan 
which he is anxious to accomplish, without at first 
distinctly seeing the way, knows what meditation 
is. The subject presents itself in leisure moments 
spontaneously; but then all this sets the mind at 
work, — contriving, imagining, rejecting, modify- 
ing. He knows what it is who has ever earnestly 
and sincerely loved one living human being. The 
image of his friend rises unbidden by day and 
night ; stands before his soul in the street and in 
the field ; comes athwart his every thought, and 
mixes its presence with his every plan. So far all 



52 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

is passive. But besides this he plans and contrives 
for that other's happiness; tries to devise what 
would give pleasure; examines his own conduct 
and conversation, to avoid that which can by any 
possibility give pain. This is meditation. 

So, too, is meditation on religious truth carried 
on. If it first be loved, it will recur spontaneously 
to the heart. Meditation is done in silence. By 
it we renounce our narrow individuality, and ex- 
patiate into that which is infinite. Only in the 
sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly 
meet the secret, hiding Grod. The strength of re- 
solve, which afterward shapes life and mixes itself 
with action, is the fruit of those sacred, solitary 
moments. There is a Divine depth in silence. 
We meet God alone. Have we never felt how 
a human presence, if frivolous, in such moments 
frivolizes the soul, and how impossible it is to 
come in contact with any thoughts that are sub- 
lime, or drink in one inspiration from heaven, 
without degrading it, even though surrounded by 
all that would naturally suggest tender and awful 
feelings, when such are by ? It is not the number 
of books you read; nor the variety of sermons 
which you hear ; nor the amount of religious con- 



SECOND MONDAY. 53 

versation in which you mix : but it is the frequency 
and the earnestness with which you meditate on 
these things, till the truth which may be in them 
becomes your own, and part of your own being, 
that ensures your spiritual growth. 

The thought of God, the thought of Thee, 

Who liest in my heart, 
And yet beyond imagined space 

Outstretched and present art, — 
The thought of Thee, above, below, 

Around me and within, 
Is more to me than health and wealth, 
Or love of kith and kin. 

BE favorable to us, O Lord ! and increase in our hearts the 
feelings of piety and devotion with which Thou hast 
inspired us ; and for fear that the inconstancy and cowardice 
so natural to us may chill our fervor, mercifully grant us the 
aid we need to conquer all that is in opposition to our love for 
Thee, and to serve Thee with all the fidelity we owe Thee, 
never relaxing in our duty to Thee. We beg this through 
the merits and mediations of Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord. 
Amen. 



0econb ftneefcag. 



Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
his thoughts : and let him return unto the Lord, and He will 
have mercy upon him ; and to our God, for He will abundantly 
pardon. 

Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. 

Very seriously, very severely, does our Lord 
Jesus Christ deal with the sins of His people. He 
suffers no man to make light of sin. If His Word, 
if conscience, if the Spirit's striving, suffices not, then 
a sterner discipline begins to chasten, — pain and 
loss and shame and punishment ; perhaps at last a 
blighted name, ruined prospects, deposition from 
service, deprivation of usefulness, — anything rather 
than that the soul should be lost ; anything rather 
than that the man should sleep the sleep of death. 
These things are the reproofs of Christ : As many 
as I love, He says, I rebuke and chasten. Gospel 
regrets are reparations too. 

But language is sometimes used as to the conse- 



SECOND TUESDAY. 55 

quences of sin, which seems calculated rather to 
depress than to stimulate the energies of true re- 
pentance. A young man is told, for example, that 
the consequences of one evil thought are essentially 
interminable ; that each particular word carries an 
influence with it never to be checked and nowhere 
to be bounded ; that the smallest omission of duty, 
much more the smallest act of transgression, not 
only has in it a condemning sentence, but also exer- 
cises (whatever he may be afterward) an absolutely 
illimitable and everlasting force. And there is a 
truth in such representations. The consequences of 
sin are incalculable. The transgressor himself has 
no power to say to his own evil : Thus far shalt 
thou go, and no further. The thing done or the 
tning left undone — the word spoken or the thought 
cherished — is out of his hand : he cannot revoke 
and he cannot regulate it. This is true. But such 
representations, left alone, can but make man reck- 
less. I have more faith in the opposite truth. The 
long suffering of Jesus Christ not only reproves 
but will in part repair also : as with every tempta- 
tion God will also make a way to escape, so (in 
some sense) beside every sin He sets a repentance 
and a reparation. 



56 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

I know not, on this side the grave, the spot from 
which repentance, nay, from which reparation, is 
excluded. Repentance is reparation. The man 
who, far on in life's journey, has sinned and fallen, 
makes reparation toward man if he repents toward 
God. The servant of God, who has been ensnared 
of evil, — who has even brought shame upon his 
name, and reproach upon his Church, — yet even 
he, if he returns and repents ; even he, if* he walks 
humbly and mournfully for his remaining days be- 
fore God ; even he, if he accepts with unmurmur- 
ing submission that sentence of comparative use- 
lessness which is the worst part of sin, and is willing 
to stoop to humble work, and to be but a hewer of 
wood and drawer of water for that tabernacle in 
which perhaps once he stood a priest ministering ; 
even he, if he comes back — it is no imaginary pict- 
ure — just to die amongst his people, making no 
secret of his grief and of his repentance, and read- 
ily offering up the remnant of a shortened life upon 
the sacrifice and service of a penitent restitution ; 
even that man has upon him the mark of forgive- 
ness, is clad again with the white garments of a 
second absolution, and when he goes hence, to be 
no more seen of the sinful, shall enter, washed and 



SECOND TUESDAY. 57 

justified, within the innermost veil, to be forever 
a king and a priest in that sanctuary where sin is 
not. That in me first Jesus Christ might show 
forth all longsutfering ! 

A broken heart, O God, my King, 

Is all the sacrifice we bring : 
Thou, God of grace, wilt not despise 

A broken heart in sacrifice. 

OGOD of compassion, God of pity, God who, according to the 
multitude of Thy great mercies, washest away the sins 
of the penitent, and by the grace of remission doest away the 
guilt of past offences ; look graciously upon Thy servants, and 
hearken unto them entreating for the forgiveness of all their 
sins ; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 



&f)ir& toetotea&ctg. 



Then saith He unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrow- 
ful, even unto death : tarry ye here, and watch with Me. And 
He went a little farther, and fell on His face, and prayed, say- 
ing, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me : 
nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt. And He went away 
again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if 
this cup may not pass away from Me, except I drink it, Thy 
will be done. And He left them, and went away again, and 
prayed the third time, saying the same words. 

There is very often some one special darling 
evil thing around which the will is found to wind 
and fasten itself with passionate clinging. It does 
not say aloud, but it would if it were frank, " This 
I cannot give up ; this I must have." Of course 
the object is different with each of us ; but the sin 
is the same. It cannot be safe to live with such a 
reservation as that. That soul offends in the one 
point, but breaks the unity of the whol law, and this 



THIRD WEDNESDAY. 59 

makes it " guilty of all." It is setting up an idol in 
our hearts ; and then we may be sure God sets Him- 
self, not in any arbitrary way, not in jealousy of our 
joy, but in the very love wherewith He loves us, 
and that He may give us all heaven at last, to take 
the idol out. We yield, unwillingly perhaps, at 
first, though in that case the pain mil only be so 
much the greater. But by all means, at any rate, 
by ways that we had not known, by dealings 
that perplex and confound us, He begins to loosen 
the fatal fascination and take it away. 

The Infinite, who sees us thus 
Mould His transcendent form in clay, 

Shatters the idol into dust, 
And we, alas ! must weep and pray. 

But first, in His tenderness, He always calls to us 
by voices of prophets, by mercies, sermons, prophe- 
cies, providences, — " Give Me thine heart." It is 
not to be concealed that, in this final surrender, as 
in all the others, from the first glowing hour of a 
new-born affection for the Lord, the heart led the 
way toward the foot of the Cross. But the will, 
too, bears a part, consenting and helping, as it were, 
by solemn purposes and exertions, to bend itself to 



60 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

the will of God, with renunciation and submission. 
Only, it must be remembered, here comes in that 
new and really supernatural gift of the Spirit of 
God, which makes this act of the will different from 
every other. No man can tell exactly where the 
line runs that divides man's part from God's in 
spiritual renewing and growth. But this we know, 
for God and our hearts both tell it to us, that " God 
worketh in us both to will and to do," and yet it is 
not till we both " will " and " do," that the blessed 
work is done. Perhaps the truth is best expressed 
by saying that we will to lean ourselves on God, and 
be thus upheld. A traveller of no great strength 
undertakes to climb Mount Washington. He comes 
presently to the end of his power and his breath, 
and sinks down exhausted; but he does not de- 
spair. A stronger friend comes to his side, but 
instead of stirring him up and compelling him to a 
fruitless struggle, or urging him on, offers to let 
him lean on his arm. Here is a new opportunity 
for the exercise of the traveller's will. He is not 
passive; he wills to lean and be helped, and at 
the same time he wills to . use all the power he 
has. And so he comes to the top, with nothing 
above him but the heavens. 



THIRD WEDNESDAY. 61 

The submission that makes no merit of its cross ; 
that does not venture to choose one lighter than 
the Lord lays on us ; that does not seek the ability 
to bear it in the delirium of pleasure, or the drugs 
of the world, or the deadening influence of time 
and change ; that does not compare your cross with 
those borne by others, or ask an explanation of it 
till the day break and the shadows flee away, but 
bears it all with a child's love for His sake who did 
not impose it till He had borne all the might and 
sharpness of all the world's crosses together, — this is 
the victory. The earth has no fatal fear and no 
insupportable sorrow in it after you have come to 
this ; you are free in a boundless liberty, strong in 
immortal strength, and at peace in a peace too deep 
for the understanding to explain, or any sufferings 
to disturb. 

Full many a throb of grief and pain 
Thy frail and erring child must know ; 

But not one prayer is breathed in vain, 
Nor does one tear unheeded flow. 

Thy various messengers employ ; 

Thy purposes of love fulfil ; 
And 'mid the wreck of human joy, 

Let kneeling faith adore Thy wiU. 



62 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

OMOST merciful Lord, who healest the inward man by out- 
ward afflictions, and by troubles in this world dost pre- 
pare us for eternal joys in the world to come ; by that cup of 
sorrow which Thou drankest for us, and by that weary path 
which Thou troddest, grant that we may willingly drink of 
Thy cup, and cheerfully follow Thee along the road where 
Thou hast gone before ; who with the Father and the Holy 
Ghost reignest one God, world without end. Amen, 



€l)ir& ^ursfcan. 



Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken 
away from her. 

O tarry thou the Lord's leisure ; be strong, and He shall com- 
fort thine heart ; and put thou thy trust in the Lord. 

Let us excite each other to seek that good part 
which shall not be taken away from us. Let us 
labor to be really in earnest, and to view things in 
the way in which God views them. Then it will be 
but a little thing to give up the world ; but an easy 
thing to reconcile the mind to what at first it shrinks 
from. Let us turn our mind heavenward; let us 
set our thoughts on things above, and in His own 
time God will set our affections there also. All will 
in time become natural to us, which at present we 
do but own to be good and true. We shall covet 
what at present we do but admire. Let the time 
past suffice us to have followed our own will ; let 
us desire to form part of that glorious company of 
Apostles and Prophets, of whom we read in Script- 



64: HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Tire. Let us cast in our lot with them, and desire to 
be gathered under their feet. Let us beg of God to 
employ us ; let us try to obtain a spirit of perfect 
self-surrender to Him, and an indifference to one 
thing above another in this world, so that we may 
be ready to follow His call whenever it comes to us. 
Thus shall we best employ ourselves till His voice 
is heard, patiently preparing for it by meditation, 
and by looking for Him to perfect what, we trust, 
His own grace has begun in us. 

There are many persons who proceed a little way 
in religion, and then stop short. God keep us from 
choking the good seed, which else would come to 
perfection ! Let us exercise ourselves in those good 
works which both reverse the evil that is past, and 
lay up a good foundation for us in the world to 
come. 

He liveth long who liveth weU ! 

All other life is short and vain ; 
He liveth longest who can tell 

Of living most for heavenly gain. 

He liveth long who liveth weU ! 

All else is being flung away ; 
He liveth longest who can teU 

Of true things truly done each day. 



THIRD THURSDAY. 65 

OLORD Jesus Christ, who hast said, My Father worketh 
hitherto, and I work ; grant ns, we beseech Thee, such 
zeal in Thy service, that we may never be weary in well 
doing, but may labor steadfastly unto the end through Thy 
mercy. Amen. 
5 



$i)ttf> jfrifcas. 



Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation 
through faith in His Blood. 

I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for 
Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. 

God is Love ; the assertion, to our exceeding 
comfort, is twice solemnly made in Holy Scripture. 
Nothing can exceed the tenderness of the tie which 
binds Him to every one of His rational creatures, 
who are His spiritual offspring ; no affection or 
sympathy, of which human life gives us experience, 
can at all adequately express to us the yearning, 
self-sacrificing devotion which the Father of spirits 
entertains toward all the souls He has created, 
however far they may have wandered from Him 
into the mazes of sin and error. The Atonement 
was effected by a Person in the Godhead, and has 
all the incalculable value which such an agency 
can give it. He took human nature into conjunc- 
tion with His divine nature, and thus atoned (or 
reconciled) God and man, as the first step in His 



THIRD FBEDAY. 67 

gigantic enterprise. In the creature-nature which 
it pleased Him to assume, He offered to the Father 
a perfectly holy and devoted human life, a life of 
perfect and intense love and purity, and therefore 
infinitely acceptable to Him, who is Love and 
Purity. But in doing so, He entangled Himself in 
the rancorous hostility and persecution of those 
He came to save ; and thus furnished an evidence, 
not only of God's willingness to save them, but of 
their utter alienation from God. And, as He 
thoroughly identified Himself with our nature, He 
entangled Himself also in all the distressing conse- 
quences of our sin, — hardship, pain, bereavement, 
death ; and — what was to Him more distressing 
than all — the clouding over of the soul, by the 
withdrawal from it of that sense of Divine favor 
which is its sunlight. But the crush and pressure 
of these awful trials only brought out the perfume 
of His graces. He was full of love still, even when 
stretched in agony upon the Cross, of forgiving 
love, restoring love, sympathizing love, to man ; of 
acquiescing, resigned, confiding love toward God. 
" Father, forgive them ; " " Father, remove this 
cup from me ; nevertheless not as I will, but as 
Thou wilt ; " " Father, into Thy hands I commend 



68 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

my spirit/' — these were the dominant chords of 
His state of mind, in the course of a trial the sever- 
ity of which none but Himself and God could ap- 
preciate. Now, surely it is not hard to understand 
that such a life and such a death must have been 
supremely acceptable to God, and, being rendered 
by One who took our common nature upon Him, 
and appeared as our Representative, must have 
entirely met and discharged what I may call the 
demands of God's perfect holiness in the accept- 
ance of sinners. 

When penitence has wept in vain 

Over some foul dark spot, 
One only stream — a stream of blood — 

Can wash away the blot. 

Tis Jesus' Blood that washes white, 

His hand that brings relief, 
His heart that's touched with all our joys, 

And f eeleth for our grief. 

OGOD, who of Thy great love to this world didst reconcile 
earth to heaven through Thine only-begotten Son, grant 
that we who, by the darkness of our sins, are turned aside 
from brotherly love, may by Thy light shed forth in our souls 
be filled with Thine own sweetness, and embrace our friends 
in Thee, and our enemies for Thy sake, in a bond of mutual 
affection ; through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen. 



€J)tr& Qatmba$. 



It is a good thing to show forth thy faithfulness every 
night. Where is God my Maker, who giveth songs in the 
night ? 

By His light I walked through darkness. 

St. Athanasius observes that from the creation 
of the world until Christ, the day preceded the 
night, as we read in Scripture ; but from the com- 
ing of Christ, the night precedes the day ; and 
thus we begin to celebrate the day solemnly from 
the evening of the preceding day. This was typi- 
cal to show how from light men were to decline to 
darkness, from God to errors and idolatry ; but 
from the time that the Sun of Justice — Christ — rose 
upon us, we are brought out of darkness into the 
light of Divine faith. Anna, the widow, departed 
not from the temple day and night ; the holy 
shepherds, too, were keeping watch when they 
beheld the vision of angels in the sky ; and the 
Saviour himself repeatedly reminds us of the need 



70 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

of watching by night, and taught lis by His exam- 
ple, and admonished Peter in the time of the 
Passion : " Couldst thou not watch one hour ? " 
Know, therefore, that vigils are agreeable to God. 

Nothing is constant with men. Everything 
revolves and perishes. Alas ! we proposed to per- 
form great things when the sun was mounted to 
the meridian, and lo ! in a short time, it descends 
to evening. The day is become old, the night is 
approaching ; such is the frailty of this mortal life. 
How soon the day declines, the heat cools, the light 
sinks and is buried in the shade of evening ; but 
we must run our course until we shall behold the 
Lord of lords in Sion. 

It is the vesper hour. What a symbol is here ! 
Let us say, therefore, with the disciples, whose 
hearts burned within them by the way : " Abide 
with us, for it is toward evening." Now evening, 
the mother of night, will bring forth darkness ; 
now sadness oppresses us, and despair sinks. The 
waters have come even unto our soul ; the cold of 
iniquity freezes us, and a wounded conscience 
dreads the terrible sentence of the Judge. Abide 
with us, O most clement Lord, since without Thee 
we can do nothing; we are nothing! Thou art 



THIRD SATUBDAY. 71 

our consolation, Thou art our refuge and strength ; 
Thou art a tower of might against the face of our 
enemies. The night of wickedness covers all 
things ; the light of truth faileth ; depravity- 
abounds ; charity grows cold ; our eyes are turned 
to Thee, that we may not perish. Abide with us, 
that the darkness may not come upon us, and that 
the shining light which shineth to us in that dark 
place may not be extinguished in the night. The 
end of life is near ; the evening of our day ; deliver 
us from the power of darkness, and turn not in 
anger from Thy servants ; because if Thou art with 
us, we shall fear no evil in the midst of the shadow 
of death, but with the brightness of Thy grace we 
shall be enlightened in that region of the dead. 
It is good to be with Thee, O Jesus. Abide with 
us, and turn not away from us. The darkest night 
draws on, in which no man can work. Abide with 
us, and close the door upon us, until the darkness 
shall pass over, and light again rise to visit us. 

Lead kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead Thon me on ; 
The night is dark, and I am far from home, 

Lead Thou me on ; 
Keep Thou my feet, I do not ask to see 
The distant scene ; one step enough for me. 



72 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

LIGHTEN our darkness, we beseech Thee O Lord ; and by 
Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers 
of this night; for the love of Thy only Son our Saviour Jesus 
Christ. Amen. 



2tyir& 0tm&ag. 



Above all things have fervent charity among yourselves. 
The love of Christ constraineth us. 
Ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. 
This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I 
have loved you. 

Christ does not say that all persons are to be 
loved by us alike, — with equal degrees of personal 
interest and attachment; for He never asks what 
cannot be. But that kind of love which springs 
from our being, all one in Him whose boundless 
love embraces all for the sake of redeeming them 
unto eternal blessedness and gladness, unworthy as 
they are, — this is possible for us toward every child 
of God; the unsightliest, the most disagreeable, 
the least lovely, the worst. We cannot reverse the 
inwrought laws of taste, attraction, preference, com- 
mon culture and common life, which group and dis- 
tribute men. But we can merge them all in that 
one common charity which, in the Redeemer him- 



74 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

self, was large enough to reach and gather up 
the vilest, and which in His true followers can see 
in every human creature this trace of nobleness and 
beauty — the capacity of being by repentance and 
faith raised to heavenly places — of wearing the like- 
ness and the righteousness of the Lord forever and 
forever. In other words, all can be loved in Him, 
and will be by those that have their life in Him. 
And we must not be too fastidious about people 
forsaking their ugliness and correcting their faults, 
before our charity goes out to them. Suppose a 
moment the grace of God had been measured to 
us by that thrifty rule. 

Look long at Jesus ; His sweet blood, 
How was it dealt to thee ! 

A child asked : " When God blots out the sins 
on our souls, are the blots left ? " So no material 
image suffices to display the marvellous condescen- 
sion and grace of God's charity in His Son. But 
this we know, — He does not look at the blots. 
The figure is but of robes, and they are washed 
and made white in the blood of our justification and 
pardon. How true it is, then, that the grace of 
charity, like all other graces, has its roots in the one 



THIRD SUNDAY. 75 

common ground of Christ's own spiritual life; that 
all the branches through one living trunk unite 
there. 

I in your care my brethren left, 
Not willing ye should be bereft 

Of waiting on your Lord. 
The meanest offering ye can make — 
A drop of water — for love's sake, 

In heaven, be sure, is stored. 

CHRIST Thou living fire, kindle within me the fire of 
Thy love, which Thou didst shed abroad in the earth ; 
that it may remove all vice from my soul ; that it may purify 
my conscience from remorse ; that it may cleanse my body 
from all sin ; and that it may kindle the light of the knowl- 
edge of Thee in my heart, for thine own dear sake. Amen. 






€l)ir& imonbag. 



Not as though I had already attained, either were already 
perfect. 

This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are be- 
hind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, 
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of 
God in Christ Jesus. 

There is an oblivion of the irreparable which is 
at once true and salutary. The past is. No re- 
grets, no tears, no repentances, can make it undone. 
Then accept it, recognize it, start from it. Do not 
expect to be that which your individual history 
forbids that you should be. God sees you as you 
are ; see yourself so. God knows by what gradual 
steps of sin you have fallen to this estate ; God 
knows by what gradual steps of repentance you 
have risen to this. Such as you are, be such, — such 
when you kneel before your God, — such when 
you go abroad among men ! Forget the things 
behind. That which you cannot be, by reason of 
your sin, dismiss it. That which you cannot be, 



THIRD MONDAY. 77 

by reason of your sin, forget it. If there is some- 
thing which you cannot be, there is something also 
which you can be. If you cannot be a saint, you 
may be a penitent ; if you cannot sit on the right 
hand or sit on the left, at least you may yet be a 
hired servant; at least you may be yet a door- 
keeper in the House of your God. Rest there, and 
be thankful. Merely to dwell among the thoughts 
of what might have been is unreal, and therefore 
unprofitable. Learn, secondly, and on the other 
hand, the oblivion of the attained. That is it of 
which St. Paul speaks. He counts not himself to 
have apprehended ; in that sense chiefly he forgets 
the things behind. The experience of life makes 
us almost weaiy of the records of Christian expe- 
rience as now received. If I had my choice — a 
man is tempted to say — I would dwell rather with 
the irreligious. There at least I shall find reality ; 
I shall find naturalness ; I shall find humility. 
There we hear nothing about " humble instru- 
ments," nor about being privileged to do a work for 
God. There are no publications of the triumphs of 
self-sacrifice, nor of the wonderful achievements 
wrought by the first appearance, in the home of 
the ungodly, of the saintly man or the gifted 



78 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

woman. Ah! how different was it in the first 
days! Where in St. Paul's Epistles do we find 
anything which offends thus the palate of taste, or 
thus grates upon the ear of modesty ? There, on 
the contrary, we find an utter self-forgetfulness, a 
remembrance honestly made of sins, and a hearty 
sense that Christ is all, and that whatever is, is of 
Him. We have got the words, and too much of 
them ; but we have lost the feeling and the thing 
signified. The minister of Christ must tell his 
triumphs on the platform; and the woman who 
may not preach Christ in churches must preach 
herself through the medium of the narrative, the 
memoir, or the autobiography. 

Forget, St. Paul says, the things behind. If 
God has enabled you to win back your own soul 
from evil, — or to save a brother's soul from death, 
— thank Him for it, and then forget it. If you, 
who were once the slave of sin, have become 
through Divine grace able to see and to follow the 
light of life and of immortality, stay not to reflect 
upon it ; press on, linger not, that you may not 
only enjoy the foretaste, but also win the crown. 
When St. Paul forgot the things behind, think 
what there was in it. He had seen Jesus Christy 



THIRD MONDAY. 79 

and received from His own lips the Apostolic mis- 
sion. He had left all, and followed Him. He had 
demolished by a stroke the whole fabric of an al- 
most completed self-righteousness, and set out 
quite afresh in a race of self-denial, self-sacrifice, 
and self-crucifixion. And yet he forgot all this. 
What have we to forget ? Where, in our case, is 
the edifice of the natural virtue ? Where, in our 
case, is the achievement of the spiritual grace ? If 
it be there, it is to be forgotten ; if it be not there, 
who shall measure the depth of the just, the Chris- 
tian self-abasement ? 

No longer forward nor behind 

I look in hope and fear ; 
But, grateful, take the good I find, 

The best of now and here. 

Enough that blessings undeserved 
Have marked my erring track — 

That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, 
His chastening turned me back. 

OQOD, who bestowest this upon us by Thy grace, that we 
should be made righteous instead of ungodly, blessed in- 
stead of miserable ; be present to Thine own works, be present 
to Thine own gifts ; that they in whom dwells a justifying 
faith may not lack a strong perseverance, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen. 



&l)iri> teabag. 



In that He suffered being tempted, He is able to succor 
them that are tempted. 

For we have not an high-priest which cannot be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore 
come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, 
and find grace to help in time of need. 

I suppose no truth can be dearer to a human 
heart than these two, — the sympathy of the Son of 
Man in temptation, the victory of humanity in the 
Son of Man over evil. For we are so tried and 
tossed, so compassed around with pain, so much ap- 
parently the sport of fanciful passion, so curiously 
framed as it were for temptation, with high aspira- 
tions living in us along with base desires ; so 
hovering ever on the verge of good and ill, and so 
weak to choose the good ; so troubled by the neces- 
sity of battle when our heart is weary with the 
passionate longing for rest; so sick of ourselves 
and of the vile cravings which at times possess us, 
■ — that God knows we do want some sympathy 



THIRD TUESDAY. 81 

higher than any one on earth can give us, — some 
sympathy which will not weaken but strengthen ; 
some certainty that the Eternal Love and Right- 
eousness can feel with us and assist us. Therefore 
it is the deepest blessedness to know that One who 
shared in our nature — the proper Divine Man — 
was in the days of His flesh a partaker of " our 
strong crying and tears," and "learned obedience 
by the things which fie suffered," for then we 
know that He can, in His triumphant nature, be 
still " touched with the feeling of our infirmities." 
Brethren, who are struggling with evil within you 
and without, you have with you the exalting 
power-bestowing sympathy of the Son of God and 
Son of Man. Another consoling truth is that 
humanity has conquered evil. Take that great 
fact as the foundation of all action. There has 
been human temptation without human fall. There 
has been one Man at least who has met sin on its 
own ground and has baffled the tempter. He is 
your own Brother and your God. Sin is at His 
feet, and death and hell. Brethren, if we love 
Him, they shall be at ours. We look forward, 
then, not to defeat, but to victory, — to individual 
victory, to universal victory. The conquest in the 
6 



82 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

wilderness is the earnest of a greater conquest yet 
to be. Ah ! why should we faint and falter and 
despair, when that is so divinely true ? We are 
fellow-workers with the Almighty Goodness to 
that majestic end. Therefore, conquer evil in your- 
selves in the strength of Christ. Personally, that 
is the only thing worth living for. And once you 
have begun to conquer evil in your own heart, you 
will be able to contend to the death against evil 
without you in the world. Let us pray with added 
fervor that He who fought and won the battle in 
the wilderness may give us power to do our duty 
against all wrong and all sin, with our whole heart 
and soul and mind and strength. 

Confirm us in each good resolve ; 
The tempter's envious rage subdue ; 
Turn each misfortune to our good ; 
Direct us right in aU we do. 

OLORD God of infinite mercy, who hast sent Thy Holy Son 
into the world to redeem us from intolerable misery ; let 
my faith, I beseech Thee, be the parent of a good life, a strong 
shield to repel the fiery darts of the devil ; and grant that I 
may be supported by its strength in all temptations, and re- 
freshed by its comforts in all my sorrows, till from the imper- 
fections of this life it may arrive at the consummation of an 
eternal and never-ceasing love ; through Jesus Christ. Amen. 



JFourtl) toeimeeimg. 



By patient continuance in well doing seek for glory 

and honor and immortality, eternal life. 
Rejoicing in hope ; patient in tribulation. 
They bring forth fruit with patience. 

Patience is of two kinds. There is an active and 
there is a passive endurance. The former is a mas- 
culine, the latter for the most part a feminine grace. 
Female patience is exhibited chiefly in fortitude ; 
in bearing pain and sorrow meekly without com- 
plaining. For the type of man's endurance you 
may look to the early Christians under persecution. 
This is the patience for us to cultivate, — to bear 
and to persevere. However dark and profitless, 
however painful and weary existence may have 
become ; however any man, like Elijah, may be 
tempted to cast himself beneath the juniper-tree 
and say : " It is enough : now, O Lord ! " — life is not 
done, and our Christian character is not won, so 
long as God has anything left for us to suffer, or 
anything left for us to do. 



84: HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Patience, however, has another meaning. It is 
the opposite of that impatience which cannot wait. 
This is one of the difficulties of spiritual life. We 
are disappointed if the harvest do not come at 
once. It is the work of a long life to become 
a Christian. Many, oh ! many a time, are we 
tempted to say : " I make no progress at all. It is 
only failure after failure. Nothing grows." Now, 
look at the sea when the flood is coming in. Go 
and stand by the sea-beach, and you will think that 
the ceaseless flux and reflux is but retrogressive 
equal to the advance. But look again in an hour's 
time, and the whole ocean has advanced. Every 
advance has been beyond the last, and every retro- 
grade movement has been an imperceptible trifle 
less than the last. This is progress, to be esti- 
mated at the end of hours, not minutes. And this 
is Christian progress. Many a fluctuation, many 
a backward motion, with a rush at times so vehe- 
ment that all seems lost, — but if the Eternal work 
be real, every failure has been a real gain, and the 
next does not carry us so far back as we were be- 
fore. Every advance is a real gain, and part of it 
is never lost. Both when we advance and when 
we fail, we gain. We are nearer to God than we 



FOURTH WEDNESDAY. 85 

were. The flood of spirit-life has carried us up 
higher on the everlasting shores, where the waves 
of life beat no more, and its fluctuations end, and 
all is safe at last. " This is the faith and patience 
of the saints." 

Since thy Fathers arm sustains thee, 

Peaceful be ; 
When a chastening hand restrains thee, 

It is He. 
Know His love in full completeness 
Fills the measure of thy weakness. 
If He wound thy spirit sore, 

Trust Him more. 

OGOD, who by the passion and death of Thine only-begotten 
Son didst crush the pride of our enemy the devil ; grant 
to Thy faithful servants, when they are in trouble, to bear in 
mind His sufferings, and cheerfully to endure all adversities ; 
through the same Lord Jesus Christ who livest and reignest 
with the Father and the Holy Ghost one God, world without 
end. Amen. 



Jfottrtl) €l)ttr0&ag. 



We know that all things work together for good to them 
that love God. 

Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh 
patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may 
be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. 

As the Christian advances upon his way, a sweet 
and solemn sense of the unity of life grows upon 
his spirit. " We are complete in Him." Much of 
our life, if viewed in itself only, would appear pur- 
poseless and broken, yet Christ has said : " Gather 
up these fragments that remain, so that nothing be 
lost." We learn to look at life as a whole thing; 
not to be discouraged by this or that adverse cir- 
cumstance, remembering how much there is and 
will be in that life which is " like frost and snow, 
kindly to the root, though hurtful to the flower ; " 
fatal to the bloom and fragrance, the lovely and 
enjoyable part of our nature, but friendly to its 
true, imperishable life. Looking at ourselves, we 



FOURTH THURSDAY. 87 

may see that, under a slight — sometimes a very 
slight — modification of inward bent, or outward 
circumstance, we should have been far more happy, 
more beloved, apparently more useful, than now ; 
yet we may also see as plainly, as we confess it 
humbly, that we have attained, through all these 
losses, to that to which every gain is an ever present, 
appreciable loss. Gradually, almost impercepti- 
bly, the believer will find the current of his exist- 
ence sweeping into a broader channel; will find 
" doors opening upon him — doors of happiness, 
doors of usefulness — which will be to him a Gate 
of Heaven ; " windows opening," letting in the 
breath of summer upon his soul, filling it with sun- 
shine and sweet air; suddenly, too, in the deep 
emergencies of life, some £ew interest, some friend, 
will appear like the Great Twin Brethren, or Saint 
of old, in the thick of the battle, vanishing perhaps 
when the fight is over, yet blessing him even in 
vanishing from his sight. 

Light is good, and it is a pleasant thing to be- 
hold the sun. Yet far dearer than outward peace, 
far sweeter than inward consolation, is that, the 
ever-during stay, the solace of the Christian's heart, 
the imperishable Root of which all else that glad- 






88 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

dens it is but the bloom and odor ; the dry tree 
that shall flourish when every green tree of delight 
and of desire fails. It is to the Cross that the 
heart must turn for that which will reconcile it to 
all conflicts, all privations ; which will even enable 
it, foreseeing them, to exclaim : " Yet more." 
When Christ is lifted up within the believing soul, 
nothing is too hard for it to venture upon or en- 
dure ; it rests upon a power beyond itself, and can 
bring its whole strength to bear upon generous, 
exalted enterprise. Show thy servant thy work, 
and his own will be indeed easy ! Let this power- 
ful attraction be once felt, the heart's, the world's 
great and final Overcoming, and all other bonds 
will weaken, all other spells decay. "Midnight 
is past" sings the sailor on the Southern ocean, — 
''Midnight is past ; the Cross begins to bend" 

I do not ask my cross to understand* 

My way to see — 
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand, 

And follow Thee. 
Joy is like restless day, but Peace divine 

Like quiet night ; 
Lead me, O Lord, till Perfect Day shall shine 

Through Peace to Light. 



FOURTH THURSDAY. 89 

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who healest us by chast- 
ening, and preservest us by pardoning, grant unto Thy 
suppliants, that we may both rejoice in the comfort of the 
tranquillity which we desired, and also use the gift of Thy 
peace for the effectual amendment of our lives ; through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen. 



jfottrtl) iribag. 



And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on 
Him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the 
other answering, rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear 
God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation ? And we 
indeed justly ; for we receive the due reward for our deeds : 
but this Man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto 
Jesus, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy king- 
dom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To 
day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise. 

" Repent and believe ! " is the message of God 
to fallen man. Some mean to believe without 
repentance ; but they will find themselves mis- 
taken. Faith without previous repentance is a dead 
thought, a mere notion, a doctrine admitted either 
with or without evidence, — a weak, second-handed 
conviction. Reasoning, at the best, built it up ; 
reasoning may pluck it down again. It leaves the 
mind unenlightened, the heart untouched, unpuri- 



FOURTH FRIDAY. 91 

fled, the life unaltered, the soul under condemna- 
tion of death. Faith after true repentance is a 
conviction resting on experience and intuitive 
evidence ; a truth of the first order ; it is the sub- 
stance of things hoped for and the unshaken evi- 
dence of things unseen by carnal eyes. It carries 
reason and logic headlong ; it quickens and renews 
the heart, enlightens the mind, influences the life, 
overcomes the world, and lays hold on things 
heavenly and eternal. So was the faith of the 
penitent sinner : " Lord, remember me when Thou 
comest into Thy kingdom." How does he come 
by this faith in circumstances so unspeakably 
unfavorable, so decidedly opposed to it? The 
condemned, expiring man, on yonder cross, the 
Lord of heaven ? A stumbling-block of mountain 
size to the Jews, and the very height of foolishness 
to the Greeks ! His was a giant stretch of faith, I 
confess. In respect to external support, it out- 
strips the faith of all the Apostles, the centurion, 
the distressed fathers and mothers, the blind, the 
deaf, the lepers, the paralytics ; the faith of all 
martyrs on the stake, in the flames, in persecution, 
in caves and dens of the earth. It was pure faith, 
clear and free from every support from without, a 



92 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

work of the Holy Spirit unalloyed by any earthly 
ingredient. St. Peter walked on the sea. — but he saw 
Christ pacing with firm steps over the rolling wave. 
The Apostles remained faithful to their conviction, 
— but they had witnessed ten thousand exhibitions 
of Christ's divine power, and had seen Him and 
conversed with Him for three years. The sick 
and the distressed came to Him from afar, — but 
the land was full of His fame. The saints in after 
times sacrificed their lives for Him, — but they had 
accumulating proofs of His all-overruling sceptre, 
daily adding strength (if this be possible) to the 
testimony of the sacred records. And what is it 
for us now to believe on Him when the cloud of 
witnesses and the mass of evidence in His favor 
have already become so boundless that it requires 
almost a life to pass over and duly estimate the 
whole of it ? It is all comparatively nothing. Our 
faith is sight; and woe unto that man who can 
at this present day live and die without being a 
Christian from his heart ! Sodom and Gomorrah, 
Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum, the scoffing 
Jews, the dying impenitent rebel of the text, will 
condemn him in the judgment day. 



FOURTH FRIDAY. 93 

Father, perfect my trust ! 

Strengthen my feeble faith ! 
Let me feel as I would when I stand 

On the shores of the River of Death — 

Feel as I would were my feet 
Even now slipping over the brink ; 

For it may be I'm nearer home, 
Nearer now than I think. 

OTHOU, who showest mercy and pity, grant me that 
through true faith, through good works, and through 
the Communion of Thy Holy Body and Blood, I may come to 
Thee at last ; and have mercy on Thy creatures, and on me a 
great sinner ; who reignest with the Father and the Holy 
Ghost one God world without end. Amen. 



jfourtl) 0atar&ag. 



Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 

In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiv- 
ing let your requests be made known unto God. And the 
peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep 
your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. 

The right method of dealing with anxieties, 
and maintaining peace of heart under them, is 
clearly and succinctly laid down by St. Paul in this 
precept. Whatever may be your wishes on the 
subject which makes you anxious, refer them to 
God in prayer (using the simplest and most direct 
language), not asking Him absolutely to bring them 
about, which might be productive of anything but 
a happy result, but simply letting him know them, 
and begging Him to deal in the matter, not accord- 
ing to your short-sighted views, but as seems best 
to His wisdom and love. If prudence and caution 
dictate that anything should be done to avert the 



FOURTH SATURDAY. 95 

evil you anticipate, do it, and then think no more 
of the subject. Thinking of it is utterly fruitless : 
"Which of you by taking thought can add one 
cubit unto his stature ? " And fruitless thinking is 
just so much waste of that mental and spiritual 
energy, every atom of which you need for your 
spiritual progress. Deal with a fruitless anxiety 
as you would deal with an impure or a resentful 
motion of the heart. Shut the door on it at once, 
and with one or two short ejaculatory prayers, 
rouse the will and turn the thoughts in a differ- 
ent direction. The holy women on their road to 
Christ's sepulchre anticipated a difficulty which 
threatened to baffle entirely their pious design. 
"Who shall roll us away the stone," they said 
among themselves, " from the door of the sepul- 
chre ? " It turned out that they were troubled 
about nothing. When they marched up close to 
it, the difficulty had vanished. "When they 
looked," says the Evangelist, " they saw that the 
stone was rolled away." Take encouragement 
from their example. Go forward in your spiritual 
course with all the energy of your soul. Place the 
foreseen difficulties in the hand of God, and He 
shall remove them. 



96 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Those who indulge fretful feelings, either of 
anxiety or irritation, know not what an opening 
they thereby give to the devil in their hearts. 
" Fret not thyself/' says the Psalmist ; " else shalt 
thou he moved to do evil" And in entire harmony 
with this warning of the elder Scriptures is the 
precept of St. Paul against undue indulgence of 
anger: "Let not the sun go down upon your 
wrath, neither give place to the devil" Peace is 
the sentinel of the soul, which keeps the heart and 
mind of the Christian through Christ Jesus. So 
long as this sentinel is on guard and doing his 
duty, the castle of the soul is kept secure. But let 
the sentinel be removed, and the way is opened 
immediately for an attack upon the fortress. And 
our spiritual foes are vigilant, however much we 
may sleep. They are quick to observe an oppor- 
tunity, and prompt to avail themselves of it. They 
rush upon the city at once in the absence of the 
sentinel, and do great mischief in a short time. 

In conclusion, be careful to maintain peace in 
the heart, if thou wouldst not only resist the devil, 
but also receive the guidance of God's Spirit. That 
Spirit cannot make communications to a soul in a 
turbulent state, stormy with passion, rocked by 



FOURTH SATURDAY. 97 

anxiety, or fevered with indignation. The Lord 
is neither in the great and strong wind, nor in the 
earthquake, nor in the fire ; and not until these 
have subsided and passed away, can His still small 
voice be heard communing with man in the depths 
of his soul. 

If our love were but more simple 
We should take Him at His word ; 

And our lives would be all sunshine 
In the sweetness of our Lord. 

OLORD, we beseech Thee to grant unto Thy people such a 
measure of Thy heavenly benediction and grace, that by 
the continuance of Thy clemency they may be delivered in 
every hour of need from the weakness of the flesh and the 
malice of the devil ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

7 



jFottrtf) 0tmfcas. 



Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and 
he that hath no money ; come ye, buy, and eat ; yea, come, buy 
wine and milk without money and without price. 

Let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst 
come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely. 

Eat, O friends ; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved. 

Thotj art invited, O my soul, to a royal banquet ; 
put on thy best apparel then, for the King that 
bids thee will take great notice of thy dress. It is 
the marriage supper of the great King ; let me, 
then, get on the wedding garment, that I may go 
out to meet the Bridegroom of my soul. Take 
care that thou appear like a guest, lest the Lord 
of the feast should look upon thee as an intruder. 
But come, all things are ready. Surely thou dost 
not stand doubtful whether thou shalt go or not, 
nor make excuses to put it off till another time ? 
Art thou sure if thou hast rejected this solemn 



FOURTH SUNDAY. 99 

invitation, and refused thy company to the great 
Master of the feast, who does now so passionately 
desire it, — art thou sure to be accepted another 
time ? May not these delays provoke the slighted 
King to cry out in His anger that thou which wert 
in vain bidden, shalt not taste of His supper ? 

Raise up thy faculties, therefore, O my soul, and 
consider the many obligations that thou art under 
of hastening to the banquet of thy Lord. Think 
but upon the condescension of the Almighty. He 
stoops to solicit my presence, and even entreats me 
to be there ; shall I, then, insolently reject these 
submissions of the Deity, and despise the goodness 
of my Creator ? But as the condescensions of thy 
Saviour, O my soul, in calling thee to the feast, so 
the benefits of it to thyself do oblige thee to accept 
this call, and hasten to the entertainment with an 
excess of joy. Here is that which conveys grace to 
the soul, and nourishes my faith and all other vir- 
tues to that degree as to make me a new creature, 
and fit me for the real presence of the Lord in His 
eternal kingdom. Here is that which ratifies the 
promises of God, applies the merits of my Re- 
deemer's death to my soul, and, in a word, seals 
the pardon of my sins. Here is that which will 



100 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

make me, in a manner, the receptacle of my God, 
for He will come unto me, and make His abode 
with me ; so that I shall enjoy Him here below, 
and in some measure anticipate His glorious pres- 
ence, which is in heaven the delight of angels. 

Reflect again upon the honor, O my soul, that 
is conferred upon thee. Why this great honor, 
O my Lord, to me, the most wretched of all that 
are called to Thy heavenly table? Was it not 
enough for Thee to come down from Thy glorious 
seat above, and die upon the Cross for me, but 
must Thou also provide this heavenly banquet for 
Thy servant, and oblige him to sit down in Thy 
presence, and feed upon the bread of life? O my 
soul, how I am obliged, in gratitude to my Saviour's 
love upon the cross, to be frequent in the com- 
memoration of it ! He there trod the wine-press 
of the wicked world's misery, and, in the bitter an- 
guish of His departing soul, cried out that God had 
forsaken Him. The disgrace as well as the torments 
of His cruel death, together with His willingness 
to endure all this for my redemption, are such in- 
stances of love, even in this invitation, too, as call 
for the highest expression of gratitude and a 
thankful acceptance of the proffer. 



FOURTH SUNDAY. 101 

Thine was the bitter price, 

Ours is the free gift given ; 
Thine was the blood of sacrifice, 

Ours is the wine of heaven ! 

For Thee the burning thirst, 

The shame, the mortal strife, 
The broken heart, the side transpierced. ; 

To us, the Bread of Life ! 

GRANT me, blessed Lord, not only to receive that Sacra- 
ment in the outward elements, but in the virtue and 
power thereof ; not bread and wine alone, but the Body and 
Blood of my Jesus, to the remission of all my sins and to all 
the other benefits of His death and passion for me ; through 
the same Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen. 



JxrurtJ) Jtt0nfcag. 



God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath 
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like 
Him ; for we shall see Him as He is. 

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself , 
even as He is pure. 

" The angels," says one of the Fathers of the 
Church, " always carry their heaven about with 
them wheresover they are sent, because they never 
depart from God or cease to behold Him, ever 
dwelling in the bosom of His immensity, living and 
moving in Him, and exercising their ministry in the 
sanctuary of His divinity." Christ gave warrant 
beforehand to this thought of Gregory the Great, 
when, speaking of little children, He uttered that 
unexpected and beautiful description of the privi- 
leges of their estate, so unlike all our materialistic 
ways of reckoning advantages, and says that their 



FOURTH MONDAY. 103 

angels do always " behold the face of His Father in 
heaven." The preeminent joy of these spirits that 
are without the stains of conscious sin, is their unin- 
terrupted vision of the beauty of the Lord. The 
qualification for that honor is purity of heart. Light 
is thrown from this passage on another, not without 
its difficulties, where the Saviour seems to make 
infants models for grown people. The disciples 
were inquiring who should be greatest in the new 
kingdom. Such a question must be prompted 
not merely by a vain curiosity, but by an ambitious 
emulation. To mortify their calculating selfishness, 
Jesus placed an infant before them and said, " Who- 
soever shall humble himself as this little child, the 
same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." His 
other teachings forbid us to understand Him as 
meaning that children bring into life with them no 
stains of ancestral evil, and no natural proclivities to 
falsehood and self-indulgence. Nor can He mean 
that full grown men and women, fighting in the 
fierce warfare and suffering in the terrible tragedy 
of a world of experience, with intellect and will 
and passion developed, can return to the untried and 
comparatively passive state of an infantile nature. 
He rather bids us enter into the spiritual elements 



104 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

of the child's soul, and to find there three or four 
traits which form essential features ©f any mature 
character which wears the holy likeness of His own. 
Oue is simplicity. It is the opposite of what we 
see in so many adult persons in modern society, — a 
kind of inward conspiracy between intense selfish- 
ness and an unscrupulous intellect ; a strong head 
combined with a bad heart. This is something that 
in a child would be pronounced morally monstrous. 
Another trait is docility, — a readiness to receive 
wisdom, whether taught by authority or shining by 
its own light. This is the quality that gives its sig- 
nification to the word disciple, — the chosen name 
of the learners in Christ's school. Another trait 
is trustfulness. This is the willingness to be led on 
and held up by a stronger hand. It is the childish 
germ of that great power in the Christian which 
afterward, under the nurture of the Gospel at the 
foot of the Cross, accepts the Divine mysteries, 
believes what passes the understanding, renounces 
self-sufficiency, and inherits the victories that are 
promised to faith. Another yet is purity. This is 
a cleanness from those actual defilements that come 
by the personal indulgence of the lusts of the flesh. 
It belongs to hearts that are either unpolluted by 



FOURTH MONDAY. 105 

the touch of external corruption, or else, by the puri- 
fying power of the Holy Spirit, after having been 
once disordered through the inordinate activity 
of the senses, are restored to chastity. These, then, 
are the spiritual graces that we are to cultivate, or 
to restore in our souls if we would share in the 
benediction pronounced by the Saviour on a child- 
like character. If we inquire which is chief among 
them, some light is thrown on that question when 
we turn to the Beatitudes. What is the grace that 
is there specially singled out as the qualification for 
the Beatific Vision ? " Blessed are the pure in 
heart, for they shall see God." The meek shall in- 
herit the earth. Hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness shall have their longing filled. The merciful 
shall obtain more mercy than they bestow. The 
peace-makers shall be called God's children. But 
there is one measure of the fulness of joy higher 
and richer than any other. It is not only to be re- 
warded and comforted by being in heaven, but it is, 
with the angels that watch over little children, to 
see Him whose presence makes it heaven. Among 
all the raptures of beatitudes the Beatific Vision is 
supreme ; and that, so far as Revelation has lifted 
the veil, is only for the pure in heart. 



106 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Since to Thy little ones is given such grace, 

That t hey who nearest stand 
Alway to God, in heaven, and see His face, 

Go forth at His command, 
Grant, Lord, that when around the expiring world 

Our seraph guardians wait, 
While on her death-bed, e'en to ruin hurled, 

She owns Thee all too late ; 
They to their charge may turn and thankful see 

Thy mark upon us still ; 
Then all together rise and reign with Thee 

And all their holy joy o'er contrite hearts fulfil ! 

GIVE me, O Lord, purity of lips, a clean and innocent heart, 
and rectitude of action. Make me ever to seek Thy face 
with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind ; grant me to have a 
contrite and humbled heart in Thy presence, — to prefer nothing 
to Thy love. Most high, eternal, and ineffable Wisdom, drive 
away from me the darkness of blindness and ignorance ; most 
high and eternal Strength, deliver me ; most high and eternal 
Fortitude, assist me ; most high and infinite Mercy, have mercy 
on me ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



jFourtf) (Eues&ctg. 



Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. 

Jesus Christ the righteous : the propitiation for our sins. 

God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life. 

It is the business of each one of us to apprehend 
the Gospel of a free, of a personal absolution. " If 
Jesus Christ took upon Himself the sins of all 
men, then He took upon Himself my sins — even 
mine" is an argument not more logically true than 
individually binding. There must be a personal 
transaction between God and the soul on this basis. 
There must be a solemn giving of the individual 
soul — exactly as it is seen to be and felt to be in 
history and in circumstance — into the hands of 
God himself, on the ground of a revelation made 
by Him in the Gospel as to a free and total forgive- 
ness of all sin through the alone merits of our Lord 



108 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Jesus Christ. For lack of this, many men are all 
their lifetime subject still to bondage, even though 
they say with their lips, and hold tenaciously as a 
doctrine, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." 
Yes, but of whose sins, — the sins of others, or your 
own? 

Again, it is the business of each one of us to 
apprehend for himself the Gospel promise of a 
Holy and Divine Spirit to dwell personally in him 
as the life of his life and the soul of his soul. God 
will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him / 
then if that be true — if that be true — I have only 
to ask and I shall receive. This, too, is a transac- 
tion between God and the man, which must by its 
very nature be individual and even secret. God is 
a lover of acts ; and there are acts of the soul as 
well as acts of the life. It is the business of each 
one of us, having thus stamped upon himself, by 
an individual act, the seal of his consecration — the 
double seal of a Divine absolution and a Divine 
indwelling — then to go forth as a forgiven man, 
and as a spiritual man, not indeed to presume upon 
what he has done, — not indeed to contradict by 
daily inconsistency, or to sin away by daily trifling, 
the relation toward God into which he has thus 



FOURTH TUESDAY. 109 

solemnly entered, — but still, I will say it without 
fear of misconstruction, as much as possible to for- 
get himself ; to forget himself in his Saviour's ser- 
vice, and to forget himself in giving his very life 
for his brethren. Let the individual life, thus far, 
and in this holy sense, be merged and lost in the 
relative. Let no cowardly misgiving haunt him, 
lest perhaps he be going amongst those who share 
not to the full — or perhaps share not at all — his 
convictions and his aspirations. Let him go, not 
asking where he is safest, but who most want him. 
Let him go, calling in beforehand, and calling in 
throughout, the forgiving grace and the inhabiting 
Spirit. Let him go, not to display himself, but to 
glorify God; leading others, who mark his kind 
words, his wise counsels, his gracious spirit, his 
peaceful countenance, to think of his God with 
more reverence, and of his Saviour with more love. 
And God will keep the feet of His saints ; He 
will not suffer one who thus mixes amongst men 
to be suddenly surprised or greatly moved. Thus, 
through him not least, shall the Almighty Lord 
make good His divine saying : /, lifted up from 
the earth, will drawo all men unto Me. 



110 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

For lo ! in hidden deep accord, 
The servant may be like his Lord. 
And Thy love our love shining through 
May tell the world that Thou art true, 
Till those who see us, see Thee too. 

GRANT us, O Lord, not to mind earthly things, but to love 
things heavenly ; and even now, while we are placed 
among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that 
shall abide ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



jftftf) toefctteeimg. 



If ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from 
before you ; those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks 
in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in 
the land wherein ye dwell. 

Fight the good fight of faith. 

I see another law in my members, warring against the law 
of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin 
which is in my members. 

We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. 

Never can it be well with us till we are heartily 
and boldly at work warring against all the enemies 
of the King. It may be that one requires our first 
collected strength and almost undivided attention, 
but the others must not therefore have peace. We 
may leave them till they attack us, while we go 
forward to storm the fenced city of another, but 
we must make no friendship with them, nor even 
let them come peaceably to us. They are against 



112 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

our God, and we must be against them, or we can- 
not be wholly for Him. 

We Christians are His soldiers, and must not 
shrink from carrying out His orders. If we make 
terms with sin, we are traitors to Him who requires 
that we should be ready even to resist unto blood, 
and proclaims, " He that findeth his life shall lose 
it ; but he that loseth his life for My sake shall find 
it." We cannot be as those who have not known 
Him and His will, nor even as those who rejected 
Him when they had only seen Him outwardly as 
the Son of Man, though of them He says that they 
hated the light, and came not to the light, lest their 
deeds should be reproved. If we hold off from 
opening ourselves to His searching, we are like them 
in not coming to the light ; but we are worse, because 
we say we see, even in a sense in which they did 
not. They said, " We see," thinking the light of 
the Law enough. We say we see the light of the 
Gospel. Worse, then, will it be with us than with 
them, if we will not come to that light ; for any 
affection we have toward the things it will reprove. 
Oh, let it shine full upon all your ways ! Hold back 
nothing ! Bring every thought, word, look, mo- 
tion, under its pure and searching light ; and wink 



FIFTH WEDNESDAY. 113 

not when your most favorite fancies and pursuits 
are before it. Look them through and through, if 
by any means you may detect in them the least 
6pot of the canker of sin, and when you have found 
it, magnify it in your own eyes by a concentrated 
attention as though with a microscope, till you can 
see its horrid and monstrous shape, and its incal- 
culable growths and multiplications, and till you 
are not only emboldened to cast it from you, but 
loathe it, and loathe your very self for having 
borne it about you. 

All that you can see is but a faint image of the 
malignity that inspires sin, of the spiritual wicked- 
ness against which you have to wrestle, and which 
sets itself utterly and wholly against God, and 
against all that is good and holy, and would turn 
the whole creation into loathsomeness and cor- 
ruption. With this you take part, so far as you 
allow sin. For your soul's sake, and for the love 
of your Creator, your Redeemer, your Sanctifier, 
beware of such fellowship ! 

Thou treadst upon enchanted ground ; 
Perils and snares beset thee round ; 
Beware of all ; guard every part, 
But most, the traitor in thy heart. 
8 



114 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Come, then, my soul ! now learn to wield 
The weight of thine immortal shield ; 
Put on the armor from above 
Of heavenly truth and heavenly love. 

OLORD, the great Physician of our mortal hurts and 
wounds, send, we beseech Thee, Thy salvation upon our 
weakness, that with Thee on our side and fighting for us we 
may overcome the assaults of the enemy, and, pouring forth 
all our tears and sorrows before Thee, may prevail against the 
motions of our sins ; through Thy mercy who livest and 
reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost one God, world 
without end* Amen. 



jftftl) €t)m*0&ag. 



It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and 
the servant as his lord. 

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. 

He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth 
live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and , 
rose again. 

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of 
Christ. 

" Neither the saints here know their own good- 
ness, nor the rejected their own crimes." When 
Christ the Judge tells them, " Ye treated me 60 
and so," it seems strange to them, and they both 
answer, " Lord, when saw we Thee, to be kind or 
unkind to Thee ? " And He will tell them, " In- 
asmuch as ye did it, or did it not, to one of the 
least of these My brethren, ye did it, or did it not, 
to Me." Consider well, Christian friend, what 
our Lord here teaches us all. He teaches us that He 
is Himself present with us, in the persons of our 



116 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

brethren, to be well or ill treated. You are 
out on the road, perhaps, or you are sitting 
quietly at home, and you meet with some 
one, or some one comes to you, who needs 
your help, and you have the power to help him. 
You refuse, perhaps, to help him, for some selfish 
reason ; perhaps you treat him with rudeness and 
scorn. He goes away, and you think no more of 
it. But see what our Lord here teaches concerning 
you and that person. Your meeting with him will 
be remembered at the last day, and you will find 
then, what you little thought of at the time, that it 
was Christ himself whom you were scorning and 
rejecting ; Christ who laid down His life for you, and 
who at that and every other moment was giving you 
all that you had. He asked you for a very little out 
of His gifts back again : a little money or time or 
trouble, or may be only a kind word or look, and 
you refused it. 

On the other hand, if you from a sense of duty 
put yourself out of the way to do another person 
good in body or soul, though you might not dis- 
tinctly consider it at the time, you will find at the 
last that Christ was really there, that He reckons 
it as if you were doing good to Him : it is written in 



FIFTH THURSDAY. 117 

His book, and will in nowise lose its reward. Our 
Lord spake it about bodily charity only; but it 
holds true also with regard to works of purity, 
and of that charity which regards people's souls ; it 
seems a trifle, to all but earnest believers, to give 
way to bad thoughts, to take sinful liberties with the 
eye or hand ; but what says the Scripture ? Tour 
eyes and your hands are members of Christ ; shall I 
then take Christ's Eye and Hand, and make an 
unclean use of them ? Indeed, we shall never un- 
derstand how grievous are our sins against purity, 
until we have learned to believe indeed that we are 
members of Christ ourselves ; nor against charity, 
until we believe that our brethren are so. The last 
day will show us what a depth of good or evil lay 
in all that we did willingly. It will show us that 
nothing could be a trifle to us, where there was a 
right and a wrong. 

If I have turned away, 
From grief or suffering which I might relieve, 
Careless the cup of water e'en to give, 

Forgive me, Lord, I pray, 

And teach me how to feel 
My sinful wanderings with a deeper smart ; 
And more of mercy and of grace impart, 

My sinfulness to heal. 



118 



HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 



OGOD, who art Love, grant to Thy children who eat of Thy 
bread, to bear one another's burdens in perfect good- will ; 
may they with one mind provoke one another to love and to 
good works, that by their holy conversation the sweet labor oi 
Christ may be shed abroad; through the same Jesus Christ 
our Lord who reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost one 
God, world without end. Amen. 



Jtftl) JFrtbae. 



But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto 
me, and I unto the world. 

And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after Me, 
cannot be My disciple. 

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith ; 
who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, 
despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the 
Throne of God. 

On whomsoever and howsoever the Cross has 
come, be it as the evident chastisement of sins, the 
very consequence of them, or signal punishment for 
them ; yet, if it be borne meekly by virtue of the 
saving Cross, such — though the poorest or most 
ignorant, with no other gifts of nature, no speech 
nor utterance beyond the simple confession of 
Christ's mercies through the Cross — becomes, by 
his very being, a preacher of Christ crucified. 



120 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Such is the wonderful ami mysterious efficacy of 
the Cross. It has a power and virtue, wherever it 
descends, infused by Him who said : " When I am 
lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all men unto 
Me." "Words of comfort have other power, they 
speak another language, they speak to the heart, 
when uttered by one who has felt the blessed pene- 
trating, because piercing, touch of the Cross. 
Words have a power not their own, when given 
through the inward knowledge of the Cross. They 
who utter them have a mysterious being and priv- 
ilege they know not of ; of themselves they know 
this only, that Christ has, as they deeply feel, for 
their sins, given them His cup to drink. But He 
who regards not their unworthiness, but has vouch- 
safed to them His Cross to heal them, giveth to it, 
in them, its own efficacy. As they on whom His 
gifts of healing were shown — the lame, or paralytic, 
or blind, or leprous — became, by their very being, 
living witnesses of his mighty love, so now, who- 
soever, having been once blind to himself, to the 
nature of sin, or the holiness of God, now, through 
the touch of the Cross, sees ; whosoever, once 
bowed down by a spirit of infirmity to earthly 
things, has now been lifted up to the Cross, and 



FIFTH FRIDAY. 121 

from it beholds Lis Lord, is, by that very change, 
a witness that unto Christ crucified and risen and 
ascended, " all power is given in heaven and in 
earth." It needs not words. The lowlier, the 
more real and powerful his witness ; for lowliness 
is the depth of the grace of Christ. As, before, 
through sin, there hung around him a nameless 
something, bearing a token of inward decay, so, 
when turned to God through the Cross, there is a 
hidden power within him, giving force to words, 
looks, acts, his very self-abasement and deep sense 
of unworthiness, not his own nor known to him, 
but the presence of the Holy Comforter, who ever 
rests upon the Cross and hallows it. 

Blessed, then, thrice blessed, are ye to whom 
your Lord has fitted your cross, as He, in His right- 
eous but tender love saw best for you. Blessed are 
ye, if ye but learn your blessedness, whatever cross, 
by nature or by the order of His government, He 
has placed upon you. Te will not seek high 
things on whom the lowly Cross has been be- 
stowed. But treasure it up for yourselves in your 
secret hearts ; there is no form of it which is not 
healing ; bury it deep there : it will heal you first, 
through His gracious Spirit, and when it has 



122 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

healed you, will, through you, heal others. Only 
yield yourselves to His fatherly hand who gave it 
you, to do to you, in you, through you, His loving 
and gracious will. So may the very punishment 
of sin raise you to the very life of the blessed ; the 
chastisement of self will conform you, by His 
grace, to His ever-blessed will, which is the joy of 
angels, the perfection of saints, the bond of all 
things, the end of the human life. 

Every bird that upward springs 
Bears the Cross upon his wings ; 
We without it cannot rise 
Upward to our native skies. 

Every ship that meets the waves 
By the Cross their fury braves ; 
We without it cannot rise 
Upward to our native skies. 

Hope it gives us when distressed, 
When we faint it gives us rest ; 
Satan's craft and Satan's might 
By the Cross are put to flight. 

ADORABLE Jesus, of humility and compassion that 
passeth knowledge, who didst carry Thine own cross to 
Mount Calvary, and didst bid the mourners who followed 
Thee not to weep for Thee, but for themselves ! grant me to 



FIFTH FKIDAY. 123 

be a partaker of Thy spirit, that I may bear with a patient mind 
whatever cross Thou shalt lay upon me, and bewail with true 
repentance my transgressions, so that, crucified to the world, 
I may be quickened by Thy cross to life everlasting. Grant 
this, Lord Jesus, for Thine own mercy's sake. Amen. 



jfifif) 0aittr&ag. 



The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. 

Ye therefore, beloved grow in grace, and in the knowl- 
edge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth 
unto an holy temple in the Lord. 

As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, 
that ye may grow thereby. 

Men grow in stature, they know not how ; they 
eat, they drink, they sleep, are nourished, they 
know not how ; and so, day by day, and year by 
year, pass through the stages of life, through child- 
hood, youth, to manhood and mature years. So 
should it be in our recreation. In Holy Baptism, 
He recreates us in His own image; passes His 
hand upon us, puts the first germ of spiritual life 
within us, to grow, be nourished, expand, flower, 
bear fruit, until it take into itself all our old nature, 
and we become wholly new. It is a spark from 






FIFTH SATTJBDAY. 125 

heaven, which should be fanned into a flame by 
the breath of charity, and burn within us, until it 
has consumed all low desires, all selfish thoughts, 
everything which offendeth, and yield us pure, a 
holy acceptable sacrifice unto God. Such should 
our Christian course be ; such is the blessed course ; 
a gradual daily growth, from the first hour when 
we awake to the thought of God and of our own 
deathless being, to our final passage through death 
to endless life. 

By the grace of God alone can we grow ; and 
that flows into us more largely or more scantily 
according to what we have ourselves become. If 
we have allowed our hearts to grow cold or 
worldly, much more if defiled, we cannot at once 
love or serve God, or repent, or have that alacrity 
and energy of faith which is the blessing of His 
more faithful servants. We are not masters of our 
own faith or love. We cannot expand ourselves to 
receive God. One step only is in our power, — the 
next. We cannot at once have great love, or deep 
humility, or intense penitence, or an active soul, or 
a reverent spirit, or a devout mind. We can 
neither at once unlearn evil habits wholly, nor 
learn great virtues. We can rarely bound in our 



126 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Christian course. Step by step is tlie toilsome 
ascent to be won. Single acts of virtue, wrought 
by the grace of God, are the steps to heaven. If 
in these we correspond to the grace of God, He 
will give larger increase. It may be He will bring 
us into some new trial, in which, if by His grace 
we conquer, He will make us other men. One 
decisive deed well done, solely for His glory 
and His love ; one trial well surmounted by His 
grace, will often, through His mercy, lift men up 
at once far beyond their measure. On one heroic 
act He has wrought the whole living habit into 
the soul. A whole life may lie wrapped up in one 
single deed, which He hath given and crowneth. 
One fervent act of self-devotion to our Lord, giving 
ourselves for life or death, weal or woe, to His 
blessed and almighty will, surrendering ourselves 
and all which is ours wholly as He wills, and it 
may be we shall find His gracious hand on ours, 
leading us to follow His steps, although it be to 
Calvary. But as this deed or purpose of itself, so 
all is of grace. The morrow of grace is no more in 
our power than of time. The first act for which 
He gives us grace is ours; all beyond is God's. 
But as we use the present, He will give the future. 



FIFTH SATURDAY. 127 

Despair we not, then, when we see any grace of 
reverence or deep love or lowly humility or in- 
stant, fervent thankfulness, which we have not; 
nor yet must we attempt to transplant it at once, 
full-grown, into ourselves. Pray we for the grace 
of God to do each single act, as He shall will, to 
His glory ; and He will lead us whither as yet we 
know not. 

All unseen the Master walketh 

By the toiling servant's side ; 
Comfortable words He speaketk, 

While His hands uphold and guide. 

Holy strivings nerve and strengthen, 

Long endurance wins the crown ; 
When the evening shadows lengthen, , 

Thou shalt lay thy burden down. 

ETERNAL God who seest my weakness and knowest the 
number and strength of the temptations against which 
I have to struggle, leave me not to myself, but cover Thou 
my head in the day of battle, and in all spiritual combats 
make me more than conqueror through Him that loved me. 
Grant that I may continue steadfast, immovable, always 
abounding in the work of the Lord, and, by patient continu- 
ance in well-doing, seek, and at last obtain, glory and honor 
and immortality and eternal life ; through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. Amen. 



JTiftl) 0tm5<uj. 



While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly, 
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. 
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the 
holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which 
He hath consecrated for us, and having an High Priest over 
the House of God ; let us draw near with a true heart in full 
assurance of faith. 

Few disciples have ever been brought either to 
understand the Atonement as a doctrine for the 
mind, or to feel it as a power in the heart, by any 
argument. It is not reasoning that brings men to 
the foot of the Cross. When I know, in my weak 
will and stricken conscience, that I am worthless, 
and with no strength in me to make myself rich 
toward God, I shall want an atonement. When 
the dreary conviction takes possession of me that I 
have lost my hold on the mercy-seat in heaven by 
the thorough selfishness of my life, I shall betake 
myself to that Mediator who places one of His 
mighty and merciful hands there, and the other in 



FIFTH 8TJNDAY. 129 

my own. When I see that, through theBe wayward 
or headstrong years, I have so sinned that there is 
no true life in me, and yet that these years are 
hurrying away, and that the end is not very far off, 
I shall be ready to believe in that Sacrifice which 
takes all sin away, — in that Death which to every 
believer is endless Life. Then I must say in my 
closet — and if there, why not openly before the 
world ? — " I am lost if I am left alone. Justify me, 
O Saviour, through Thy redemption ; lay Thy Cross 
where Thou wilt on this my selfish and sinning 
nature. Touch me with Thy cleansing blood. Be 
thou my righteousness, and let me hide myself in 
Thee." 

You believe in God. You know that He is ab- 
solutely holy. Before that holiness you know that 
even angels that are without sin veil their faces. 
From a contemplation of that splendor of spiritual 
purity you turn and look upon yourself. Your 
whole character seems simply one dark spot against 
the brightness. Beckon it as you will. Look at 
things done that ought not to have been ; look at 
things left undone that ought to have been done ; 
examine motives and the mixtures of motives ; see 
how much self has had to do with the best things in 
9 



130 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

you ; confess that pride and passion have not let 
yon alone, even when yon were at your prayers ; 
think of the disguises that your sin has put on, ag- 
gravating every other iniquity with that of insincer- 
ity; consider what envy and vanity and ambition 
and lust and anger are, not only in their uncovered 
deformity, but in the hidden roots of their crafty 
and unclean life ; then reflect what a life would be 
that should render unto God, in blameless obedience 
and in the unblemished beauty of a holy love, all 
that is God's, and compare that life with your own. 
Is not something wanting to bring that soul of yours 
and God together? Do you not desire a "days- 
man that can lay his hand upon both ? " Is there 
not needed an atonement ? Suppose it is suggested, 
then, that perhaps, although you are at present so 
far estranged, you can gradually work your way 
back and stand by your own endeavor, unatoned or 
unreconciled, in harmony with your God. Do 
you believe that ? Does your course hitherto, from 
year to year, look like reaching that consummation ? 
If it did, what security have you of a year or a day 
to accomplish that great restoration ? Besides, what 
you want is not peace by and by, in an indefinite 
future ; you want it now, if you want it ever. • Oh, 



FIFTH SUNDAY. 131 

if every soul that lives forever lives through the 
Redeemer's dying, then surely this sacrificial re- 
demption is not some abstruse or speculative dogma 
that we should dispute about it ; it is a Divinely 
human fact, and we are to give thanks for it and 
glory in it. It is no dream of a troubled sleep, no 
device of theological ingenuity, — it is the one first 
and most vital of all living realities to men. It is 
to be preached as men carry the news of life to 
their brothers that have been left to die. It is to 
be believed, without a doubt, by men who, without 
it, would find life itself darker and drearier than 
death. 

Holy, blessed lives are the fruit of that atonement. 
So that on this Passion Sunday we can well take up 
the hymn of the saintly singer of more than two 
hundred years ago : 

Thou who didst suffer for my good, 

And die my guilty debts to pay ; 
Thou Lamb of God, whose precious blood 

Can take a world's misdeeds away, — 

O let this weary pain, the smart 
Of life's long tale of grief and loss, 

Be gently stirred within my heart 
At thought of Thee and of Thy Cross 1 



132 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

I give Thee thanks that Thou didst die f 

To win eternal life for me, 
To bring salvation from on high : 

Oh, draw me up, through love, to Thee ! 

BLESSED and adorable Saviour, who didst complete the 
work of our redemption with many sufferings and woes 
unutterable ! give me grace, I beseech Thee, to follow Thee 
in the course of Thy bitter passion, that I may consider what 
Thou didst endure for us sinners ; and be constrained to live 
henceforth not unto myself, but unto Thee, who didst give 
Thyself for me, and die, the just for the unjust, to bring me 
unto God. Grant this for Thy mercy's sake. Amen. 



JTiftl) JHonirag. 



If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had 
sin : but now they have no cloke for their sin. 

For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear 
witness unto the truth. 

The words of our Lord Jesus Christ contain 
many things ; but they contain not one compliment ; 
not one word spoken in mere complaisance, in un- 
meaning acquiescence, in worldly flattery. Whoso- 
ever came to Him, friend or foe ; whoever invited 
Him to his house; whoever appealed to Him for 
His counsel, must make up his mind to being dealt 
with according to truth. A sinner is a sinner, a 
hypocrite is a hypocrite, a traitor is a traitor, and 
as such he is accosted. We scarcely feel, as we 
read with eighteen centuries between, what a phe- 
nomenon this must have been in a world just as 
flattering then, and just as false as now. There 
was one Person moving upon the earth who evi- 



134 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

dently took the measure of every life and sounded 
the depth of every heart ; One who could character- 
ize, and made it His business to characterize, each 
human being who came to Him, exactly as he was, 
— moral or immoral, sincere or insincere, earnest or 
indifferent, false or true. No one else could do 
this justly ; no one else could do this with pro- 
priety; but there was that in Christ which made 
men endure it from Him, and though the words 
might rankle, they must be borne. And the words 
are there still. The imperishable Book records 
them. They are written for our admonition. 
Jesus Christ sees us as we are, and He can only 
deal with us on a footing of reality. 

Some of us have felt the blessing of this. In 
moments of deep self-conviction, we have found 
the unspeakable comfort of entering just one only 
presence in which we are known precisely as we 
are, and yet are borne with. There is peace, if 
there be pain also, in the consciousness of that 
in tuition. We have nothing to explain to Jesus 
Christ. Lie there at His footstool : He knows you 
through and through, and yet He listens ! There 
is ever peace in truth. If we seek not rest in con- 
fession to man, it is partly because it is impossible. 



FIFTH MONDAY. 135 

— we cannot, if we would, show ourselves as we 
are; and partly because we cannot trust man, — 
could lie but see us as we are, he would spurn, he 
would abhor. But Christ can see, — and yet He 
loves too. 

And the soul feels this. In hours of mirth and 
gladness, in days of pride and self-ignorance, we 
may not value Christ either for His truth or for His 
tenderness. But let the evil day come — it may be 
of disappointed ambition, it may be of sharp bereave- 
ment, it may be (worse yet to bear) of remorse and 
shame and tarnished honor — then there is some- 
thing, account for it as we may, which makes the 
soul trust and turn to the truthful and compassionate 
Lord ; knowing before He speaks that He knows 
all; knowing before He speaks that He can yet 
abundantly pardon. 

He is alone my help and hope, 

That I shall not be moved ; 
His watchful eye is ever ope, 

And guardeth His beloved. 

Whether abroad amidst the crowd, 

Or else within my door, 
He is my pillar and my cloud, 

Now and for evermore. 



136 HELPS TO A HOLY J.ENT. 

BE Thou, O Lord, our protection, who art our reedmption ; 
direct our minds by Thy gracious presence, and watch over 
our path with guiding love ; that among the snares which lie 
hidden in this path wherein we walk, we may so pass onward 
with hearts fixed on Thee, that by the track of faith we may 
come to be where Thou wouldest have us ; through our Lord 
Jesus Christ. Amen. 



JFiftl) &ue0&ag. 



Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of 
faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. 

Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is 
renewed day by day. 

All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as 
keep His covenant and His testimonies. 

They took knowledge of them that they had been with 
Jesus. 

The work of our sanctification consists simply in 
receiving, from one moment to another, all the 
troubles and duties of our state in life as veils 
under which God hides Himself and gives Him- 
self to us. Every moment brings some duty to be 
faithfully performed, and this is enough for our 
perfection. The moment which brings a duty to 
be performed, or a trouble to be borne, brings also 
a message declaring to us the will of God. The 



138 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

soul has only to follow Jesus, the Divine Model, by 
the way of those crosses and sacrifices which every 
day brings. Are you longing to find out the secret 
of belonging wholly to God ? It is simply this, — 
to serve Him in all that comes to you ; in all that 
you have to do. All leads to this union; all 
tends to perfect it, excepting sin, and that which is 
not our duty. Let us carefully keep hold of the 
thread of the Divine will ; it will guide us through 
the labyrinth of this life, and bring us safely to the 
centre, which is God himself. , 

In the life of faith the soul continually pursues 
God through all that hides Him, and, if faithful, 
never stops in this pursuit. All roads bring it 
nearer to God ; all things are means of leading it to 
Him. Whether God afflicts or comforts the soul, 
it will equally adore Him to be indeed its Lord and 
its God. If we had faith, we should be at peace 
with all creatures, thanking them in our heart for 
all the sufferings they cause us, because they greatly 
help to perfect us. The more nature rebels, the 
more firmly will faith say : " All comes from God, 
or is allowed by Him, and therefore all is good." 
There is nothing which faith does not overcome ; 
nothing which it will not accept. Faith passes be- 



FIFTH TUESDAY. 139 

yond all earthly things, pierces all shadows, to 
attain the truth ; keeps it ever in a firm embrace, 
and will never let herself be separated from it. The 
simplicity and elevation which faith gives to the 
soul, make it satisfied with everything. Nothing 
is wanting to it ; nothing is too much for it ; and 
at all times it blesses the Divine hand which causes 
the waters of grace to flow so gently upon it. It 
has the same tenderness for friends and enemies, 
being taught by Jesus Christ to regard all men as 
God's instruments. Live as one who is going from 
the figure to the truth, — from death to immortality, 
— from time to eternity. 

That love is purest and most true 

Which leans upon its Saviour's breast, 

And thinks with pleasure ever new 
How in all things to please Him best ; 

Which in all things, not great alone, 

On serving Him is fully bent, 
And knowingly will not to one, 

No ! not the smallest sin consent. 

BLESSED Lord, whom without faith it is impossible to 
please, let Thy spirit, I beseech Thee, work in me such 
a faith as may be acceptable in Thy sight, even such as may 



140 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

show itself by my works, that it may enable me to overcome 
the world, and conform me to the image of that Christ on 
whom I believe ; that so at the last I may receive the end of 
my faith, even the salvation of my soul, by the same Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen. 



0i*tl) toe&nesfcag. 



Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord ? and who shall 
rise up in His holy place ? He that hath clean hands, and a 
pure heart. 

Follow peace with all men, and 7ioline88 t without which no 
man shall see the Lord. 

St. Chbysostom, St. Augustine, Bengel, and 
Tholuck — men that have gone deep down into the 
sacred significance of the Scriptures — have sup- 
posed that by the original word used for holiness is 
meant that special form of holiness or sanctification 
which consists in the purging away of unchastity. 
At the root of all the various uses of the term 
purity in the Bible, there lies the idea of a spiritual 
love unmixed with any baser element. What de- 
ranges and poisons the pure relations of human 
society is an adulterated heart, — the intermixture 
of sensual with spiritual and orderly affections. 
When St. Paul exhibits the union of the Church 



142 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

with Christ under the image of the Bride and 
the Bridegroom, declaring it to be the Divine pur- 
pose to present the Bride to her Lord " holy and 
without blemish," he really offers the strongest 
conceivable appeal to the Christian disciple for an 
unspotted life. The holiness to which we are 
called is not mere moral correctness, such as may 
result from a cool temperament, or a self-control- 
ling prudence, or a fear of social disgrace, or even 
a scrupulous conscience. That searching Physician 
of the heart, who knows all that is in man, aims 
rather at the inner cleanliness, which is a far more 
comprehensive and more profound grace, and is 
obtained only by the creation of his own image in 
the soul, or rather by a secret union with himself. 
So St. John, whose own love for his Master was 
like the colorless light, tells us that the real Chris- 
tian purity has both its motive and its perfection 
through an inward reception of Christ by faith and 
the hope of hereafter being drawn even into a 
closer communion with Him and likeness to Him. 
" He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, 
even as he is pure." To whatever degree the 
presence of that immaculate purity is realized, 
defiled imaginations, thoughts, and actions, become 



SIXTH WEDNESDAY. 143 

intolerable, and the voluntary indulgence of them 
becomes impossible. As this refining process goes 
on — the soul being gradually more and more 
" changed into the same image, from glory to glory 
as by the Spirit of the Lord " — it is even conceiv- 
able that the whole scene of life where we dwell, 
with all its moral relationships, should come to be 
regarded as a kind of sanctuary, and that we should 
shrink from the pollution of it at any point as 
instinctively and reverentially as we should from 
the profanation of a sacrament. This is holiness. 
At first, and possibly for a long time, it will need 
incessant vigil and solemn conflict. The forbidden 
curiosity of the first sinners in Eden tempts us, before 
we are aware, along the line of their degradation 
and shame. But as sure as we are faithful, the 
struggle will become less sharp. Virtue will find 
help in the wholesome occupations of a Christian 
life. The truth will open itself, that a pure relig* 
ion before God is the busy and charitable religion 
that visits the fatherless and widow, leaving no 
time for corrupting trains of thought, reading, or 
conversation. A spirit so guarded keeps itself un- 
spotted from the world by keeping out of the way 
of the world's ambiguous allurements. For most 



144 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

of us it is a necessary discipline and a long battle. 
But even if the faithful soldier and servant should 
find it a fight unto the life's end, he is not to lose 
sight of the promised liberty and victory. Ad- 
vancing well up the hill, he will find that unto the 
pure all things are pure. Natural objects will be 
divested of their sensual associations. The entire 
life will be as unperturbed by passion as the heart 
is swift in answering to the attractions of Christ's 
holy will, and perfect in His joy. 

Think that He thy ways beholdeth ; 

He unfoldeth 
Every fault that lurks within ; 
Every stain of shame glossed over 

Can discover, 
And discern each deed of sin. 

OHOLY and immaculate Jesus, who wast conceived in a vir- 
gin's womb, and who dost stiU love to dweU in pure and 
virgin hearts, give me, I beseech Thee, the grace to keep my 
heart with all diligence, and to withstand all temptations of 
the flesh, and with pure and clean heart, to follow Thee the 
only God, even for Thine own merits and mercy's sake. 



0i*tl) djttrs&aD. 



He went out and found others standing idle, and saith unto 
them, Why stand ye here all the day idle ? They say unto 
Him, Because no man hath hired us. 

Then said they unto Him, What shall we do, that we might 
work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, 
This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom He 
hath sent. 

We complain of the slow, dull life we are forced 
to lead, of our humble sphere of action, of our low 
position in the scale of society, of our having no 
room to make ourselves known, of our wasted ener- 
gies, of our years of patience. So do we say that 
we have no Father who is directing our life, so do 
we say that God has forgotten us, so do we boldly 
judge what life is best for us, and so by our 
complaining do we lose the use and profit of 
the quiet years. We cannot be still, cannot be at 
rest. It is the most natural and yet the most ruin- 
ous fault which belongs to men in an age which 
10 



146 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

lives too fast and has almost a morbid passion for 
incessant labor. Oh, men of little faith ! because 
you are not sent out yet into your labor, do you 
think God has ceased to remember you ? because 
you are forced to be outwardly inactive, do you 
think you also may not be, in your years of quiet, 
" about your Father's business ? " Receive the 
lesson of Christ's life — the lesson Milton learnt 
from God's spirit in his heart — 

" They also serve who only stand and wait/' 

To Christ himself, His Father's business, then, 
was the development of all His inner self, the 
maturing for His work. The idea of His mission 
and the powers for it grew together, and when the 
time for action came He was ready. 

Such times of waiting mark, not uncommonly, 
our life. Our youth is kept back from the press 
of labor, or our manhood is forced to pause. It is 
a period given to us in which to mature ourselves 
for the work which God will give us to do. 

Oh, use it well ! Grow in it ; do not retrograde. 
The way we spend it oftentimes in youth is in 
light indifference or daring bravado ; and when the 
time comes in which the work which God has 



SIXTH THURSDAY. 147 

chosen for us is ready for our energy, we have no 
instruments to work with, no ideas to expend and 
express in fruitful labor. The way we spend it 
oftentimes in manhood is in whining at God's un- 
fairness, as we call it; in complaining regret for 
past inactivity ; and then, when work is again laid 
before us, we have lost the time during which we 
ought to have matured ourselves ; enfeebled the will 
by fruitless wailing ; chilled the aspirations which 
kindle, and the faith and hope which sustain, the 
toiling spirit of a noble workman for the race ; we 
have missed our opportunity, and now we cannot 
enter on our ministry. Nothing is sadder than the 
way in which we wilfully spoil our life. 

Christian, no time of seeming inactivity is laid 
upon you by God without a just reason. It is God 
calling upon you to do His business by ripening in 
quiet all your powers for some higher sphere of 
activity which is about to be opened to you. The 
time is coming when you shall be called again to 
the front of the battle. Let that solemn thought 
of dread yet kindling expectancy fill the cup of 
your life with the inner work of self-development 
which will make you ready and prepared when 
your name is called. The eighteen years at Naza- 



148 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

reth, what was their result ? A few years of ac- 
tion, but of action concentrated, intense, infinite ; 
not one word, not one deed, which did not tell, 
and which will not tell upon the universe forever. 

Eighteen years of silence, and then, — the regen- 
eration of the world accomplished, His Father's 
business done. 

Oh, forgive our faithless mind, 

Raise us from our low estate, 
Breathe in us the will to find 

Higher life in small and great. 

Give us watchful eyes and clear, 
Purged from the scales of sense, 

Seeing still the Master near, 
And the city far from hence. 

TEACH us, Lord, to submit ourselves both now and ever 
to Thy will and providence, and to cast all our care on 
Thee, who never leavest those that love Thee ; and grant that 
we may so seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, 
that all good things may be added unto us ; through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen, 



0i*t!) jFrftag. 



Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows : 
He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for 
our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; 
and with His stripes we are healed. 

The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 

Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. 
And they took Jesus and led Him away. And He, bearing His 
cross, went forth. 

"Then delivered He Him." Now close the 
temple, ye sons of Aaron; the types and shadows 
with which ye had to do have done their duty, now 
that the Substance has appeared. Lay aside the 
band from your foreheads, and the breastplate, 
ye ministers of the sanctuary ; for know that an- 
other now justly adorns Himself with both, and 
that your priesthood has reached its termination. 

The soldiers have made their preparations, the 
awful sign has appeared, which has since become 



150 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

the standard of the kingdom of Christ and the 
token of our salvation. During the space of three 
thousand years it was constantly symbolized to the 
view of the believing Israelites. It is even re- 
flected in the peculiar manner in which the dying 
patriarch Jacob, with crossed hands, blessed his 
grandsons Ephraim and Manassah. It glimmered 
no less in the wave offerings of the tabernacle and 
temple, which, as is well known, were wont to be 
waved so as to make the form of a cross appear. 
In the wilderness, the sign was elevated to support 
the brazen serpent, and the spirit of prophecy in- 
terwove it in the figurative language of David's 
Psalms when placing in the mouth of the future 
Messiah the words, " They pierced My hands and 
My feet." 

Yonder they conduct the Man of Sorrows ! 
One cannot reflect who it is that is thus laden with 
the accursed tree without feeling one's heart petri- 
fied with surprise and astonishment. But it is well 
for us that He traversed this path. Only observe 
how the form of the Lamb which taketh away the 
sins of the world is so clearly expressed in Him. 
Behold Him, and say if you do not feel as if you 
heard the ancient words proceed from His silent 



SIXTH FRIDAY. 151 

lips : " Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire, 
a body hast Thou prepared for Me. Lo ! I come, 
I delight to do Thy will, O my God, yea, Thy law 
is within My heart." Had He shrunk back from 
this fatal path, His road to suffering would have 
represented to us that on which, when dying, we 
6hould have quitted the world. Instead of soldiers, 
the emissaries of Satan would have escorted ; in- 
stead of the accursed tree, the curse of the law 
itself; instead of fetters, the bands of eternal wrath 
would have encircled us, and despair have lashed 
us with its fiery scourge. Now, on the contrary, 
angels of peace, sent by Eternal Love, will at 
length bear us on a path of light, illumined by 
heavenly promises, to Abraham's bosom. 

Certainly, it may still be the case that, during 
our earthly pilgrimage, we are led on similar paths 
to that on which we see Jesus, our head, proceed- 
ing. For the world hates His members, like Him- 
self; and Satan ceases not to desire to have His 
redeemed, that he may sift them as wheat. But 
heaven is no longer closed over our path of suffer- 
ing and disgrace, nor does the black cloud of 
rejection and the curse obscure it. The sword of 
God has returned to its scabbard, and peace and 



152 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

hope are the gracious companions who walk by our 
side. Christ has deprived our fearful path of its 
horrors, our burdens of their overpowering weight, 
our disgrace and need of their deadly stings, and 
placed us in a situation to say, with the royal Psalm- 
ist : " Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for Thou art 
with me ; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." 
Blessed, therefore, be the faith of our Prince of 
Peace on the cross ! Let us not cease to accompany 
Him daily thereon in the spirit. It will unspeak- 
ably sweeten our own painful path ; for why does 
He take this horrible road, but to enable us to 
traverse ours with heads erect, because we are freed 
from curse and care ? Upon His path He not only 
carries our sins to the grave, and breaks a passage 
through all the obstacles which blocked up our 
access to the Father, but He makes, at the same 
time, all the bitter waters of the desert sweet, and 
neither leaves nor forsakes us till He brings us safe 
to our heavenly home. 

The Cross is heavy in thy human measure, 
The way too narrow for thy inward pride j 

Thou canst not lay thine intellectual treasure 
At the low footstool of the Crucified. 



SIXTH FRIDAY. 153 

Oh, that my faithless soul one hour only 
Would comprehend the Christian's perfect life ; 

Despised with Jesus — sorrowful and lonely — 
Yet calmly looking upward in the strife. 

CHRIST, O Son of God, whom Thy Father delivered up 
for us all when He accepted Thee as the true Oblation 
for us, hearken to the prayers of Thy people, save those whom 
Thou hast purchased, quicken those whom Thou hast freed, 
suffer not to go into everlasting mourning those whom Thou 
didst come to redeem, lest they should perish eternally. Thou 
who didst endure the Cross for us, pierce our hearts with the 
nails of Thy fear, that here we may obtain remission of our 
sins, and in the world to come, eternal joy; through Thee 
whom we believe to have been crucified for all, and who 
livest with the Father and the Holy Ghost one God, world 
without end. Amen. 



0brtl) 0ator&aa. 



Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of 
God. 

Abide in Him ; that, when He shall appear, we may have 
confidence. 

Watch ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the 
hour when the Son of Man cometh. 

At the time appointed the end shall be. 

We are not yet in our home ; not as yet do we 
reign ; things around us still dazzle us ; self-pleased 
thoughts may yet mislead us ; we have still, while 
yet we are in the flesh, to strike closer and closer 
into the narrow way, closer and closer to cleave to 
God, more and more to part with all which would 
keep us from God. And so God often brings 
things around us to a sudden end, or brings us in 
our own sight near the end, that so we may see 
things more as we shall see them in the end. Sea- 



SIXTH BATTED AY. 155 

sons of sorrow or sickness, or approaching death, 
have shown persons a whole life in different colors 
from what it wore before ; how what before seemed 
"grace" was but "nature ;" how seeming zeal for 
God was but natural activity ; how love of human 
praise had robbed men of the praise of God ; how 
what they thought pleasing to God was only pleas- 
ing self; how one subtle, self-pleasing sin has 
cankered a whole life of seeming grace. Wherever, 
then, we may be, in the course heavenward, morn- 
ing by morning let us place before ourselves that 
morning which has no evening ; and purpose we 
to do that, and that only, which we shall wish we 
had done, when we shall see it in the light of that 
morning when in the brightness of His presence 
every plea of self-love which now clouds our eyes 
shall melt away. Evening by evening set we be- 
fore us that night "wherein no man can work," 
and resolve we, by God's grace, to work on the 
morrow, if we see it, more steadfastly the works 
of God. "Place daily," says St. Anselm, "place 
daily before your eyes your end. Think most in- 
tently whose those things shall be, what they shall 
profit you, which shall remain after you. Think 
whither ye shall go ; what ye shall carry with yon ; 






156 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

what, sent before by you, ye shall find there. Of 
a truth, ye shall not carry thither nor find there 
aught but your own deeds, good or bad. This 
think ye ; these things meditate, by night and by 
day, in public or in private ; this be your converse 
together, What do we ? Why linger we ? Near 
is our last day. How spend we our life ? How 
make we amends to God for our sins ? Prepare 
we, as seeing close to us the day of our calling 
hence, and so fashion ourselves that we may, with- 
out fear, go to judgment, since there we shall re- 
ceive what we have done in the body, good or 
bad. 55 

Shrink we not, although, as we bring our works 
near to the light of that Day, much seeming good 
be shown to us to be real evil, or full of imperfec- 
tion. Shrink we not, although our seeming treas- 
ure melt away, and wherein we thought ourselves 
rich we find ourselves poor ; shrink we not, al- 
though the fire of that Day, while it burns away 
our dross, scorch us ; draw we not back, although 
by that light we see that we must part with this 
self-indulgence, or sloth, or quickness of temper, 
or that cherished way of acting, which has wound 
close around us self-esteem, or love of the praise 



SIXTH SATURDAY. 157 

of man, or even longing for human sympathy. 
Rather offer we ourselves, in union with the All- 
atoning Sacrifice, to love nothing, to prize nothing, 
to wish for nothing, to fear nothing, to hold noth- 
ing, to regret nothing, but what we shall love, 
prize, wish for, or be glad we had feared, held, re- 
gretted, when our Saviour and Judge's voice shall 
utter those dread words, " It is done." So, baring 
ourselves more and more of all unpleasing unto 
Him, shall we, with less sluggish steps, follow 
Him who emptied Himself of all which was His 
that He might give us all. Nor, having chosen or 
wishing to choose the better part, think we that it 
will be long and wearisome to do without this or 
that ; let not Satan turn or hold us back by telling 
us we can never hold on so long without this or 
that ; think we it not a weary, dreary future to 
wait so long for the coming of the Lord. His 
coming draweth nigh ; with each decaying year 
the tokens thicken of the world's decay, the closing 
strife, the coming of our God. 

Whilst the careless world is sleeping, 
Blest the servants who are keeping 
Watch, according to His word, 
For the coming of their Lord. 



158 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

Heard ye not your Master's warning 1 
He will come before the morning, 
Unexpected, undescried ; 
Watch ye for Him open-eyed. 

Teach us so to watch, Lord Jesus 
From the sleep of sin release us ; 
Swift to hear Thee let us be ; 
Meet to enter in with Thee. 

OLORD Jesus Christ, who hast promised to come again in 
like manner as Thou didst go into heaven ; we pray Thee 
to hasten the time of Thine advent, that sin and death may 
be overcome, and that we, with all Thy faithful departed, 
may be perfected in blessedness in that day when Thou 
makest up Thy jewels ; through Thy mercy who art blessed 
and livest with the Father and the Holy Ghost one God, world 
without end. Amen. 



Jpolm Stm&og 



And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, 
saying, Hosanna ; Blessed is He that cometh in the name of 
the Lord. 

And He cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith 
unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou ? Couldest not thou watch 
one hour ? 

It was less than five days after the immense 
popular excitement which drew the multitudes of 
city and country into a jubilant procession of wel- 
come and honor, with palms and garments strewn 
in the road, to greet the Prophet of Nazareth, con- 
ducting Him to the gates of Jerusalem, that He 
knelt down on the bare ground in the garden, a 
lonely sufferer, struggling with a secret agony, in 
which a sense of utter desertion and desolation was 
one of the bitterest elements ; no sound breaking 
the silence but His groans. 

The spot must have been almost the same ; for 



160 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

the rocky path by which the swelling multitude 
wound over the mount from Bethany to the tem- 
ple, and this shady orchard of Gethsemane, were 
both just east of the city gates. Was there ever, 
then, in the Bible or in history, a more pathetic 
illustration of the difference between a piety of 
mere fashion and feeling on the one hand, and a 
faith of solid principle, rooted in real convictions, 
equal to all shocks, surviving all trials and changes, 
on the other? Here, at the garden, the artificial 
stimulants have ceased to act ; the pageant has 
passed ; the crowd is scattered ; the fascination of 
popularity has waned ; and so the very friends 
and Apostles of the holy Sufferer lose their inter- 
est ; they sleep with the sleeping world when they 
ought to watch and pray. How fearful is that 
power of outside show and custom which can outdo 
the heart's own affection and faith ! How fearful 
is the weakness of inward principle which yields up 
its vigilance and trust when the moment of social 
excitement has gone by ! 

The palm-branches, and the slumberers; the 
shouted hosannas, and the heavy eyes, — we see in 
them, by contrast, the religion of impulse and the 
religion of principle. 



PALM SUNDAY. 161 

Sometimes there is an apparent beginning of 
Christian zeal and Christian action in the exhilarat- 
ing contagion of social example. It is a time per- 
haps of unusual manifestations of religious fervor. 
The air seems to be charged with a kind of spirit- 
ual electricity, — an excellent tonic if rightly mixed 
with the more stable and nutritious elements that 
sustain vitality. All the frame glows and kindles 
under it. Many are coming to Confirmation and 
Communion, — why not I ? It looks now as if it 
would be no very difficult matter to breathe ecstatic 
breath as daily air ; easy enough, while that novel 
excitement, roused by agitating preaching or ex- 
traordinary measures, continues to pull off the gar- 
ments of reserve or hesitation and strew them in 
the Lord's way ; easy enough to practise jubilee 
discipline while all the ardent family do it; easy 
enough to rank with the anxious, and to relate an 
experience, when a sacred fanaticism stirs a multi- 
tude. Why not move with the moving procession ? 
Yes; it is well to move, and to be moved. Only 
the test is coining, — the trial-night of Gethsemane, 
— solitude, temptation, watchfulness, unnoticed 
and unapplauded sacrifices. Be sure here is some- 
thing more than surface-feeling, set awake by cus 
11 



162 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

torn or animal stimulus; something more than 
impulse; it is good, honest, sober, considerate, 
patient principle, stayed up by prayer, that alone 
can remain awake and outwatch the stars, and wait 
through the darkness, and conquer temptation, and 
do it all for the honor of the suffering and bleeding 
Master. It is only this that proves that we are 
really Christians, or that Christ is ours. 

The palm-strewing and shouting multitude were 
not deliberate hypocrites ; the pharisees stayed at 
home and washed their platters. But none the less 
was the homage vain ; and it is no wonder if the 
Saviour, who saw its emptiness — and how deep 
was that emptiness ! — wept in the midst of it. He 
foresaw Gethsemane on the eve of the Passover, 
the slumberers there, the closed eyes, the weak 
flesh, the denial, the judgment-hall, the cross. 
And now, would we not find the same sorrow on 
His face if we beheld Him looking on many of our 
thin and frivolous usages of popular confession and 
discipleship, — " the form of godliness without the 
power thereof ? " 

Yes, there is a dull insensibility to a Benefactor's 
anguish, there is a sleepy indifference to a Saviour's 
work, which is nothing less than cruelty. Many 



PALM SUNDAY. 163 

of lis would rather our enemies should sharpen 
the spear, or drive thorns into our foreheads, than 
that our friends should shut their eyes and deny 
their sympathy to our pain. We give Christ noth- 
ing unless we give Him our hearts. 

Take away from our prevailing religious obser- 
vances, even in our more solemn seasons, all that is 
wholly a deference to decent social standards and 
conventional Christianity, all that is formal repeti- 
tion and going with the multitude; empty the 
sanctuaries of all worshippers who come, not for 
Christ'6 sake, but because others come ; take down, 
stone by stone, and timber by timber, all the tem- 
ples that were built up by vanity, or competition, 
or a dead compliance with a kind of external law ; 
arrest and extinguish all professedly Christian 
charities that are carried on by pride, emulation, 
ostentation, and self-will, with only a feeble mixture 
of nobler and purer motives ; take out of the char- 
ity to Christ's poor all that is put there by a sort 
of holiday benevolence; sift our customs by this 
fan in the hands of some searching John Baptist 
or the mightier Judge that comes after him, and 
we shall see why the Palm-Sunday story is put into 
the Gospels, and why it stands here with a warning 



164 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

note of examination on the threshold of Holy 
Week. "We there see, perhaps, how unfit we our- 
selves are to go down into the deep life, sorrow, 
loneliness, and agony of Gethsemane, to watch and 
pray there with the awful tortures of the Man of 
Sorrows, to see the angel from heaven strengthen- 
ing Him, and to pass thence, faithfully at His side, 
to the trial, the buffeting, and the mournful Mount 
of Calvary. 

The rocky path still climbs the glowing steep 

Of Olivet: 
Though rains of two millenniums wear it deep, 

Men tread it yet. 

These ways were strewed with garments once and palm, 

Which we tread thus : 
Here, through Thy triumph, on thou passedst calm, — 

On to Thy Cross. 

Man has not changed them in that slumbering land, 

Nor time effaced : 
Where Thy feet trod to bless, we still may stand, — 

All can be traced. 

Yet we have traces of Thy footsteps far 

Truer than these ; 
Where'er the poor, and tried, and suffering are, 

Thy steps faith sees. 



PALM SUNDAY. 166 

And now whenever meets Thy lowliest band, 

In praise and prayer, 
There is Thy presence, there Thy Holy Hand, 

Thou, Lord, art there ! 

OGOD of wonderful goodness and power, who by Thy 
words and works dost command us, though unworthy 
servants, to hope for true and everlasting blessings in Thee, 
and from Thee; grant unto us Thy servants such fervent 
hope in Thee as may rouse us to make our calling and election 
sure. In Thee, Lord, have we trusted, let us never be con- 
founded ; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. 



ittonbag in $olg fcOeek. 



And seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came, if 
haply He might find anything thereon : and when He came 
to it, He found nothing but leaves ; for the time of figs was 
not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat 
fruit of thee for ever. And Jesus went into the temple, and 
began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, 
and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats 
of them that sold doves. And he taught, saying unto them, 
My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer, 
but ye have made it a den of thieves. 

It is not anywhere expressly announced in the 
New Testament, but it is a fact strikingly em- 
bodied in the very structure of its contents, that 
while the four Evangelists are so guided by the 
Spirit which inspires them, that the narrative or 
assertion of one or two of them is deemed sufficient 
in authority and fulness for giving us most of the 
events and discourses in our Saviour's ministry, 
yet they must all alike pause and dwell in minute 



MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 167 

detail, and with reverential particularity, on the 
august incidents which immediately precede, ac- 
company, and follow His last suffering, clustering 
around the Cross. How impressive is this silent 
tribute to the transcendent majesty and the su- 
preme efficacy of His Passion above all His words 
and other acts in the redemption of the world! 
Because every man's first want is reconciliation, 
atonement, and forgiveness for sin, every possible 
mark of historical certainty, and every seal of 
authenticity, must be set on the recital of that 
Divine miracle. The story bears the stamp of a 
fourfold verification. No repetition can be weari- 
some or superfluous in descriptions so fraught as 
these are with the intense and personal interest 
of our own deliverance from death into life. It 
is therefore wisely appointed by the Church that, 
from the first day of Holy Week on, we shall read 
over and over the several records of these four 
Evangelists, holding before us all the manifold 
touches and colorings given to the solemn por- 
traiture by the individual witnesses and historians, 
till every essential feature is engraven on the be- 
lieving heart, and our souls are steeped in the 
spirit and power of the scene. And now, as to- 



168 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

day we stand looking toward Calvary, where the 
one great consummation is reached and finished, 
in which, whether as Messiah or God-man or Re- 
deemer or the loving and obedient Son, He suffers 
to give us peace, and bleeds to make us clean, and 
dies once that we may live forever, so we see the 
four evangelic witnesses each bringing his own 
separate evidence and contribution to assure the 
believer and to glorify the Cross, as in turn they 
all take their glory from it. " The fulfilment of 
type and shadow, of the hopes of patriarchs, of the 
expectations of prophets, yes, and of the dim long- 
ings of a whole lost and wicked world, must be 
declared by the whole evangelistic company ; the 
four streams that go forth to water the earth must 
here meet in a common channel ; the four winds 
of the Spirit of Life must here be united in one." 

We will turn now a moment to the chief occur- 
rences which give a special and individual charac- 
ter to this second day of the great Week. 

The evening before — the excitement of the palm 
procession and the triumphal reception being over 
— as He was starting on His return to Bethany 
after this wearisome pageant, " Jesus entered the 
temple and looked round about upon all things." 



MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 169 

The words are few and simple ; but the hush of a 
very deep and awful veneration falls on our minds 
as we even partially conceive what the thoughts 
were that must have accompanied that look, what 
events were impending, and what shadows were 
gathering. The morning explained this silent in- 
spection of the courts of His Father's house. As 
once near the beginning, so here at the close of 
His great work of life, the Son of God cleanses 
His Father's house, with holy and indignant zeal, 
of its secular profanations. What does the purify- 
ing mean ? It means that every true, right work 
in this world must begin and end with the rever- 
ent acknowledgment of God our Father ; it means 
that in every Christian life, of man or woman, 
youth or child, large and clean and unobstructed 
place must be made for prayer ; it means that busi- 
ness must be marked off from worship with a fully 
drawn and definite line, not suffered under any 
pretext or apology to take more than its share of 
time or thought, or to intrude into the sanctuary, 
or to do what is just as bad, — hold men out of the 
sanctuary. And this line is not one that shall 
prevent the influences of the sanctuary and the 
power of the Gospel from passing out to hallow 



170 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

all the world and sanctify all work, but one that 
shall save God's public name and ordinances from 
being swallowed up and defiled in the extortions 
of Mammon. It means that neither outwardly, in 
sordid acts, nor inwardly, in selfish, exclusive, un- 
charitable dispositions, are we to make our Father's 
house a house of merchandise. And let us not for- 
get that there is a spiritual and real sense in which 
the whole world of our life is our Father's house. 

And then, as in the whole spirit of our Christian 
faith, the labors of a practical and merciful right- 
eousness follow close and certainly after the prayers 
and praises of church or chapel or closet, so here 
in the example of our Lord's humility : no sooner 
had He asserted the necessity and sacredness of the 
ordinances of worship and sacrifice, than " the blind 
and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He 
healed them." How long will it be, after our feet 
bear us out of the temple doors, before some sick 
relative or neighbor, some blind heart, some lame 
soul, will require our patient and cheerful minis- 
tration, and so put to the proof the worth of these 
sacrifices of the lips ? 

It was the same day that, as He was walking 
toward the city, the demands of that hunger which 



MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 171 

again makes us see how thoroughly mortal His 
mortal nature was, directed the attention of His dis- 
ciples to the fig-tree — which, although the time of 
figs ^7as not yet, held out, by its unusual flourish 
of premature and leafy pretension, a promise of 
refreshment — the mortifying symbol of how many 
human figures all about us, whose only sign of life 
is the parade and rattle of their barren profession ! 
Most reasonably is it asked, " Why marvel we that 
like the watered earth that bringeth not forth 
herbs meet tor the use of man, but beareth only 
thorns and briers, that emblematic tree was now 
nigh unto cursing, and that its end was to be 
burned ? The dews of heaven had fallen upon it, 
the sunlight had fostered it, the sheltering hill- 
side had protected it, all seasonable influences had 
ministered to it, and all had been utterly in vain ; 
the issue was a barrenness that told not only of frus- 
trated but of perverted influences ; gifts from the 
God of nature received only to issue forth in un- 
profitable and deceptive produce ; not in the fruit 
of His appointment, but in nothing but unseason- 
able leaves." Before the day ended, there was to 
be another tribute, — welcome always to the Shep- 
herd and Saviour of the young, in the music of 



172 



HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 



their spontaneous singing. There were children 
crying in the temple for Him that purified both its 
rooms and their breasts, — " Hosanna to the Son of 
David." It must have been an inspiration from 
above that touched their lips and their eyes. Jesus 
called it the perfecting of praise, as David himself 
prophetically had called it. Their chant must 
have rested Him, amidst the scowls and gibings of 
the scribes and pharisees. 

This night our Blessed Master comes not to 
Bethany, but to us. Know ye not that ye are the 
temple of the Holy Ghost? Is it with sadness 
that He looks round about upon that hidden sanc- 
tuary ? What does He see in its open courts — in 
its hidden chambers ? Is it the house of prayer ? 
and of what further sacrilege does it need yet to 
be purged ? and what will the scourge of knotted 
cords be that must purge it ? 

The trees, too, are here. The Lord comes to- 
day to these, — hungering still for our love and our 
service and our holiness. What more can He do, as 
the prophet asks, to make them fruit-bearing, that 
He hath not done? Are there leaves only? and 
if there is some fruit, is it pinched, bitter, boasted 
of? Or is it fruit that He will gather and keep ? 



MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 173 

Nothing but leaves ; the Spirit grieves 

Over a wasted life ; 
Sin committed while conscience slept, 
Promises made but never kept, 

Hatred, battle, and strife ; 
Nothing but leaves ! 

Nothing but leaves ; no garnered sheaves 

Of life's fair, ripened grain ; 
Words, idle words, for earnest deeds ; 
We sow our seeds, — lo ! tares and weeds ; 

We reap with toil and pain 
Nothing but leaves I 

OHOLT and merciful Saviour, Thou most worthy Judge 
Eternal, who as on this day didst curse the fig-tree bear- 
ing leaves and not fruit, take away from me all hollow, vain, 
and false show, and make me plenteously to bring forth the 
fruit of good works, and of Thee to be plenteously rewarded, 
through Thy merits, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost 
livest and reignest ever one God, world without end. Amen. 



2tae0&ag in §alg toeek. 



And in the daytime He was teaching in the temple ; and 
at night He went out, and abode in the mount that is called 
the Mount of Olives. And all the people came early in the 
morning to Him in the temple, for to hear Him. 

Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light 
with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come 
upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not 
whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, 
that ye may be the children of light. These things spake 
Jesus, and departed, and did hide Himself from them. 



Drawing nearer to the Mount of Sacrifice, we 
find it was on the third day of the great Week that 
Christ said so much in His solemn conversations 
and parables of the assaults of our spiritual ene- 
mies. These powers of darkness, represented in 
the selfishness, pride, and malice of the influential 
class at Jerusalem, seeing that their time was short, 
arrayed this morning a,ll their craft and mustered 



TUESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 175 

all their forces. " Is it lawful to give tribute unto 
Caesar or not ? " Caesar stood then for all the 
power of this world, — for the Empire and Rome. 
"Kender unto God the things that are God's." 
Have you ever taken pains to think how much 
ground of your heart and your life that covers? 
What are these " things that are God's ? " What 
share has He ; what rights of ownership, creation, 
preservation ; what title, what claims, in your bodily 
strength, in your time, in your real or personal 
estate, in your mind and its education, in your 
tongue and its speech, in your business and its 
profits, in your social influence and its motives, in 
your home-happiness and the fruits of it? In your 
habitual way of estimating these things, and talk- 
ing about them, do you treat them as His, in any 
6ense, — His so as to be used for Him, — His to be 
left with you or taken away from you as may be 
His perfect will, — His to be accounted for to Him ? 
or is it the habit of your mind to regard them all as 
your own, in some exclusive and self-gratifying 
way, as if your rights in them would never be 
invaded, — as if no hand but yours could be laid 
upon them ? Take any one of your most precious 
possessions ; set it before you in the solemnity of 



176 



HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 



your hour of solemn communion with your Maker 
and Judge ; put this question : What are the 
things of God in relation to this my child and his 
training for eternal life ? What are the things of 
God in my every-day employment ; in my conduct 
toward my family ; in my amusements ; in my 
very dress and manners and food and drink? 
What are God's claims here ? What change would 
come over my practices and my actions here if I 
could say, truly, Such is my hunger and thirst 
after holiness, it is my meat and drink to do the- 
will of God ? 

In the same day, as He walked the courts of the 
temple which He had cleansed of its profanations, 
Jesus saw the rich casting their ostentatious gifts 
into the treasury, and a poor widow laying all that 
she had at the feet of Him who gives us all that 
we have. She had found out how to render unto 
God the things that are God's, not stinting herself 
to those offerings which cost her nothing. As she 
drew back her empty hand, and went away to toil 
for more, what countless riches Christ poured into 
her everlasting keeping, — " She hath cast in more 
than they all." New measurements, new stand- 
ards of value, new reckonings of much and little, 



TUESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 177 

high and low, humble and exalted, strong and 
weak, the Gospel brings. The first shall be last, 
and the last first. It was so not then only, but it 
is so in all temples, it is so in all lands, it is so in 
every branch of the Church. 

The censer swung by the proud hand of merit 

Fumes with a fire abhorred ; 
While faith's two mites, dropped covertly, inherit 

A blessing from the Lord. 

Even on earth the eyes of man are not so wholly 
discolored as not to see this superior spiritual 
beauty. As with the Mary that we read of in the 
Gospel yesterday, whose unpretending offering of 
ointment at Christ's feet was only a waste in the 
cold calculation of the thrifty bystanders, so a 
woman's profounder economy of simple affection 
and trust, making self poor for Jesus' sake, goes out 
as a perfume through the earth ; and wheresoever 
the Gospel of the Cross is preached, her deed is a 
part of its story of self-renunciation. As the Holy 
Weeks come round, do they find us any nearer to 
the measure of devotion that the Saviour accepted 
and blessed ? 

As the same day wears on, some Greeks — pros- 
12 



H8 



HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 



elytes to Judaism — that had come tip to Jestis, 
with the characteristic curiosity of the Greek intel- 
lect, hearing the rumors of this new Nazarene Phi- 
losopher — as they doubtless esteemed Him — speak 
words that beautifully utter our deepest need, in 
spite of all the intellectual culture and refine- 
ment and strength in the world, — the cry of sin : 
" Sir ! we would see Jesus ! " Beholding in this 
confession the sign and prophecy of the final vic- 
tory of His cause, Christ exclaims that the hour is 
come when the Son of Man sbould be glorified. 
But instantly the remembrance of the Cross, which 
tinges every moment, rises in His mind. Faithful 
as ever, though it may discourage and repel the 
questioners, He fearlessly announces that only 
through the unsightliness of death can His true 
kingdom unfold itself, and the Tree, whose leaves 
are for the healing of the nations, fill the earth. 
" Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth 
much fruit. He that loveth His life shall lose it ; 
if any man serve Me, him will My Father honor." 
Other momentous acts and words were crowded 
into this full day; the reply that disarmed the 
doubts of the Sadducees ; the announcement to the 



TUESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 179 

shallow scribe of the one great commandment ; the 
rebukes of the pharisees for inconsistent and self- 
seeking dogmas ; and those most penetrating para- 
bles, like that of the Ten Yirgins, which show lis 
the shortness of the time, the greatness of the 
work, the blessed bridal welcome of those that 
enter with burning lamps, and the shutting of the 
door. 

But, before the night falls, there is one august 
scene more. Many generations before, the prophet 
Zechariah, foretelling the final coming and judg- 
ment, for which the world is still looking, saw the 
curtain lifted, and wrote thus : " His feet shall stand 
in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is 
before Jerusalem on the east." Now, in most un- 
foreseen coincidence, as the evening shadows gather, 
the Messiah moves out of the city eastward, and, 
His feet standing on that very spot of Olivet, He 
declares to the ages that one solemn prediction 
which should always keep them in expectation of 
His reappearing, ending, " Then shall they see the 
Son of Man coming with power and great glory ; 
and He shall send His angels, and they shall gather 
together His elect from the four winds, from one 
end of heaven to the other." 



ISO HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

How it comforts our hearts, and brings our Lord 
very near to our poor human feeling and weak- 
ness once more, after these awe-inspiring wonders, 
to read that at the end of the day, with the same 
earthly air breathing on His forehead that refreshes 
our weariness, He walks out with His disciples to 
the family circle and home, to rest with those that 
His human affection loves at Bethany. 

Virgins ten, with joyous feet, 
t Forth the Bridegroom went to meet ; 

Wise with heavenly wisdom, five 
Kept with oil their lamps alive ; 
Five, with earth-born folly dim, 
Scorned with oil their lamps to trim. 

While the Bridegroom yet delayed, 
Slumber bowed each virgin head ; 
Sudden rose the midnight cry, 
" Lo ! the Bridegroom draweth nigh ! " 
Rose the startled virgin train, 
Trimmed their dying lamps again. 

Vainly now for oil ye cry ; 
Foolish virgins, hence, and buy. 
Haste the five, but now the door 
Closes on them evermore ; 
And a voice, that stuns each heart, 
Cries, I know you not, depart. 



TUESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 181 

FIX, Lord, my thoughts and my desires upon heaven 
and heavenly things ; teach me to despise the world, to 
repent me deeply for my sins ; give me holy purposes of 
amendment and Divine strength and assistance to perform 
faithfully whatsoever I shall intend piously. Enrich my un- 
derstanding with an eternal treasure of Divine truths, that I 
may know Thy will, and that Thou who workest in us both to 
will and to do of Thy good pleasure. Teach me to obey all 
Thy commandments, to believe all Thy revelations, and make 
me a partaker of all Thy gracious promises, for Jesus Christ's 
sake. Amen, 



tocbttesbaa in $013 toeek. 



And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the 
passover, His disciples said unto Him, Where wilt thou that we 
go and prepare that Thou mayest eat the passover ? 

And He sendeth forth two of His disciples, and saith unto 
them, Go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man 
bearing a pitcher of water : follow him, and wheresover he 
shall go in, say ye to the good man of the house, The Master 
saith, Where is the guest-chamber, where I shall eat the 
passover with My disciples ? And he will show you a large 
upper room furnished and prepared : there make ready for us. 

In the narrative of the Evangelists, there is one 
sentence that falls on the ear with the startling im- 
pression of a double sense. In the preparation for 
the Passover, Jesus sent forward St. Peter and St. 
John, in the streets of Jerusalem, to an unknown 
resident there, with this question, " The Master saith 
unto thee, Where is the guest-chamber where I shall 
eat the passover with My disciples ? " The walls of 
that city widen out, as we read, to the width of the 



WEDNESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 183 

world. Peter and John are only the messengers of 
that Word which has gone out into all the earth. 
The Passover is the spiritual feast of the Lord's 
presence and fellowship, — His truth and faith, 
His hope and charity. And who is the man bearing 
the pitcher of water, going on some poor common- 
place errand, busy with some narrow business, 
plodding along a routine of daily work which 
seems to be altogether of the earth, earthy, — little 
mindful who is at hand, and what a glory waiting 
at his door ? Who is he but you, and you, one and 
another of these ordinary half-awakened people? 
Unto thee the Master saith, " Where is the guest- 
chamber where I shall eat the passover with my 
disciples?" It is a personal question. It is a 
proposal to the inner life of us all. It is an offer 
of the one Infinite Divine blessing, for, in receiv- 
ing the Master, Christ, the Son of Mary and the 
Son of God, we receive all the real good there is 
in earth and heaven. And is it not just after this, 
manner that the one great revelation and disclosure 
is almost always made to us that we can be privi- 
leged to welcome and entertain Him, by that keen, 
real, living sense of which the best name is faith ? 
Is it not apt to be while we are on the way of some 



184: HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

familiar duty, in some path that we did not strike 
out for any great purpose, that the messenger of God 
meets us, — a sharp Providence abrupt as Peter, 
or a breath of God's loving spirit gentle as John ? 
So, if now, in the midst of our Christian heritage, 
some of us find our feeling too dull, our prayers too 
lifeless, and our sense of things divine too cold, we 
may be sure we are not to gain the livelier feeling 
or the awakened zeal by waiting till some rare 
occasion or great opportunity shall overtake lis. It 
will come when we are in the common lot and 
about common labors. We are to expect it then, 
look for it then, make ready for it there. It will 
come not so much by our going to a new place, 
a new set of circumstances, or looking out for a 
propitious season — for these are very apt to prove 
perverse, and disappoint us after all — as by our 
opening the eyes and the ears of our hearts, and, 
when the voice speaks to us, stopping to listen, and, 
as the prophet says, standing still to see the salva- 
tion of God. 

" Where is the guest-chamber where I shall eat 
the passover ? " the Master saith. There seems to 
be in this question just that twofold sound of invi- 
tation and authority, offer and command, which is 



WEDNESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. 185 

always to be found in the word of the Saviour 
when He proposes to take up His abode in any of 
our hearts. He offers to come in if we will suffer 
Him ; for the act must be free. He commands us 
to suffer Him, because he has a right there ; the 
upper chamber is His ; and though faith holds the 
key to it, we cannot keep Him out without diso- 
bedience to Him, and guilt and misery following. 
This is what our Christian life — part a task and part 
a delight, part duty and part privilege, part drudg- 
ing and part festival, part of law and part of grace 
— must always include, the proportions of the ser- 
vice of obligation and the service of joy constantly 
varying, according as we have more or less of the 
Master's own spirit, and live nearer to Him. The 
man bearing the pitcher of water might have taken 
this most delicately and condescendingly worded 
message to him only as a compulsory requirement, 
and have gone about the labor of opening his house 
to these strangers as an irksome necessity, or he 
might hail the notice sent him as only a coveted 
permission, and so have sprung to seize the honor 
and the pleasure, as love always answers to the call 
of love. There is this radical, deep difference be- 
tween our two kinds of compliance with our Lord's 



186 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

word. It is plain enough with the householder 
which would be the true hospitality, so with all of 
us which would be the accepted and loyal service, 
carrying the affections, the hands, the feet, the lips, 
the offerings of time and money cheerfully with it, 
and making the Divine Guest truly at home in the 
guest-chamber of the heart. " Thou shalt do 
well," says a very devotional and saintly writer on 
the Holy Communion, evidently with this same 
image in his thoughts, " to imitate the example of 
a poor countryman, who, understanding that the 
king would visit his house, removed all things that 
he thought might offend his eyes, did very dili- 
gently sweep all his house, and although he could 
not beautify it according to the worthiness of such a 
guest, yet did as much as ever he was able to receive 
him worthily. What, then, wilt thou do to the King 
of kings, who loveth but to impart His good gifts 
unto thee? Labor, therefore, in cleansing and 
decking thyself ; hanging the chamber or upper room 
of thy best devotions with the tapestry of holiness, 
and welcome Him with love, who out of very love 
hath said, My delight is to be with the sons of 
men." 

And what it is in you that needs to be put out 



WEDNESDAY IN HOLT WEEK. 187 

of the chamber, before Christ can be worthily re- 
ceived there, it is not for any mortal tongue to tell, 
but it is not beyond your reach, with the Bible, 
with secret prayer, with the holy and helpful ordi- 
nances of the Church, to know full well. 

He cometh, as He came of old, 

Suddenly to His Father's shrine ; 
Into the hearts He died to make 

Meet temples for His grace Divine. 

He cometh, as the Bridegroom comes, 

Unto the feast Himself has spread ; 
His flesh and blood the heavenly food 

Wherewith the wedding guests are fed. 

He cometh, — let not one withdraw, 

Nor fear to bring repented sin ; 
There's blood to wash, there's bread to feed, 

And Christ himself to enter in. 

LORD, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my 
roof, yet remember that Thou, being Lord of all, didst 
take upon Thee the form of a servant, and wast the friend of 
publicans and sinners. Let that humiliation of Thine, I pray 
Thee, move Thee not to despise me, but do Thou mercifully 
come unto me, or graciously receive me coming unto Thee. O 
Blessed Lord, kindle such a holy flame in my heart that it 
may consume all my sins, that I may never again defile the 



188 



HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 



place which Thou hast chosen for Thy temple. Give me time 
and space to repent, and give me grace that, as by Thy holy 
inspiration I do sincerely and steadfastly resolve on an entire 
reformation, so by Thy merciful guidance I may perform the 
same. Amen. 



itt<um5g~®l)vtr0&aB. 



Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Geth- 
eemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go 
and pray yonder. And He took with Him Peter and the two 
sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. 

And He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto 
Thee ; take away this cup from Me : nevertheless not what I 
will, but what Thou wilt. 

And there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, 
strengthening Him. And being in an agony He prayed more 
earnestly, and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood 
falling down to the ground. 

Christ no sooner comes to the garden than He 
takes His three more confidential disciples, sep- 
arates Himself from the rest, and begins to be sor- 
rowful and very heavy. The two words in the 
original text, of which the latter is more emphatic 
than the former, so as to make a climax, are joined, 
for the sake of emphasis, to express one thought, 
together, for the expression of which either word 
alone would have been too weak. This condition 



190 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

of our Lord the disciples first inferred from His 
appearance, but soon out of the abundance of His 
depressed heart His mouth spake. Unable to bear 
it any longer alone, He said unto them : " My 
soul" — my very soul, as we should say — "is ex- 
ceeding sorrowful" — surrounded with sorrow — 
"even unto death." Stronger expressions than 
these do not exist in language, and exaggeration is 
out of the question here. Then, seeing them weary 
and sleepy, He adds : " Tarry here," — do not re- 
turn to the others to sleep ; watch with Me ! His 
strength was spent, and for the first time He felt 
the need of human sympathy. But soon finding 
even their company burdensome, He tears himself 
away from them, about a stone's cast, to pray alone* 
Then He assumes the attitude of deepest distress ; 
He falls "on His face" and pours out His souL 
Submission He finds in His heart while praying, 
but relief He finds none. Distressed, He returns 
to His disciples, and " findeth them asleep." And 
He saith unto Peter : " What ! " — you have made 
such professions of attachment to Me, you wanted 
to die for Me — " could you not watch with Me one 
hour ? " Alas ! He pleads for one hour's sympathy 
and assistance from His weak and drowsy follow- 



MAUNDY-THTJKSDAY. 191 

ers. Oh, how destitute must He have felt him- 
self ! He goes the second time to pray alone, and 
finds no relief ; He returns the second time to His 
disciples, and finds no sympathy. Human relief 
fails ; God remains His last hope. Moving away 
once more, He prostrates himself again, — and now 
the most awful struggle for life begins. And being 
in an agony, He prayed more earnestly ; and in the 
cool night season, while prostrated on the damp 
ground, the sweat of anguish breaks out over His 
whole body and is as it were great drops of blood 
falling down to the ground. " And there appeared 
an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening 
Him." 

Such, then, was His frame of mind that no ordi- 
nary means did suffice to relieve Him ; an angel, 
with an express message and peculiar assurances, 
must be sent. High and distinguished honor, in- 
deed, to be the bearer of this errand, — an errand 
before unheard of in heaven ! But can you think 
of anything more fit to impress us with ideas of 
the most awful — I had almost said unnatural — dis- 
tress than the need of a messenger from heaven to 
comfort and strengthen Jesus the Son of God, lest 
His distress should crush Him ? 



192 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

No doubt it was intended by a holy Providence, 
and was one of the burdens which Christ had to 
bear for us, that He suffered destitute of all human 
consolation. It does seem as though the disciples 
had been providentially given up to the most stupe- 
fying influence of this body of clay to disable them 
to afford relief to their Master when the unmingled 
cup of suffering was to be drunk to the bottom. 

Jesus our Saviour, in this destitute and needy 
condition, is an object of the deepest interest and 
of liveliest gratitude to those who know the secret 
ways of God with His children. They know every 
particular sacrifice and deprivation of Christ is like 
a sown seed, from which rich and waving harvests 
of spiritual consolation are continually springing 
up to the dear little flock of His pasture. Not a 
prayer, not a sigh, not a tear of His, but it procures 
for them some heavenly treat ; and His fastings 
and deprivations, His watchfulness, weariness, and 
exposures, are richly decking their spiritual table, 
and draw the curtain of heavenly peace around the 
defenceless pillows of their rest. And when, in 
the depth of anguish, they feel the soothing influ- 
ences of Christian tenderness and sympathy, and 
are upheld by the wrestling intercessions of their 



MAUNDY-THURSDAY. 193 

beloved in Christ Jesus, — when they are carried 
6afely through the trying hour of darkness and dis- 
tress by the faithful prayers of their watchful 
friends, poured forth in their hearing at the 
throne of Grace, — ah ! then they remember with 
6weet and humble gratitude the forsaken Jesus in 
the garden, and a connection between their spirit- 
ual riches and comforts and His destitution be- 
comes clear all at once to their souls, of which they 
had no conception, perhaps, while in health of 
body and in the cheerful vigor of heart and mind. 
They rejoice then exceedingly, with a joy full of 
glory, that ever He did procure such sweet com- 
forts for their distressed souls ; and they are pre- 
pared to give Him everlasting thanks for every 
tear He dropped upon the accursed ground of this 
world. Yet they are careful, too, to learn the im- 
portant lesson of Him, when lawful earthly con- 
solations and sympathies fail, to go a little farther, 
and, where no man can see them, or overhear their 
prayer, to fall on their faces, and, with naked and 
unalloyed faith and trust in God, to lean upon His 
almighty arm alone, and to throw themselves with 
their burden down at His feet, there to live, or 
there to die. 
13 



194 



HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 



Gloomy garden, on thy beds, 
Wash'd by Kedron's water-pool, 

Grow most rank and bitter weeds, — 
Think on these my soul, my soul ! 

Wouldst thou sin's dominion see ? 

Call to mind Gethsemane. 

Sins against a holy God ; 

Sins against His righteous laws ; 
Sins against His love, His blood ; 

Sins against His name and cause ; 
Sins immense as is the sea : 
Hide me, O Gethsemane ! 



OLORD Jesus Christ, who in the sorrow of Thy soul didst 
fall down upon Thy face in prayer, give us grace that 
we likewise in all our sorrows may betake ourselves with 
humble and earnest prayer to our heavenly Father for aid and 
comfort and relief. Hear us, O Saviour Jesus Christ, for Thy 
name's sake, who livest with the Father and the Holy Ghost 
one God, world without end. Amen. 



<&00b~irri&ag. 



And when they were come to the place, which is called 
Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the malefactors, one 
on the right hand, and the other on the left. 

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, He said, 
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit: and having 
said thus, He gave up the ghost. 

Now when the centurion, and they that were with him 
watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that 
were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly* this was the 
Son of God. 

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down 
his life for his friends. 

We draw near to the Mount of Sacrifice. We 
Btand, nay, we kneel, at the foot of the Cross. We 
come there now, not because it is the custom of a 
fast, but because we are driven thither by the bur- 
den of our human hearts, — our need of reconcilia- 
tion by suffering. 

Look closely at this want, for it is that vital spot 



196 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

in all humanity where sorrow is most keen, and 
where relief is most joyful. The sure result of evil 
is pain ; of persistent sin is death. Hence the vol- 
untary surrender to pain, pain even unto the body's 
death, is felt, and has been ever felt, to be the 
natural expression of a penitent soul. It is propi- 
tiation: not because God takes pleasure in His 
children's suffering, but because that is the soul's 
fitting tribute to the just majesty of goodness and 
the holy authority of Right. Government with- 
out penalty is gone, and all its blessed protections 
are dissolved. Hence the honest heart cries out in 
its shame and fear : " Let me suffer for my sin." 
Suffering for it there must be somewhere ; trans- 
gression is a costly business ; so it must always be 
and always look ; right must stand at any rate ; law 
must be sacred, or all is gone ; and since nothing 
is so dear as life, and blood is the element of life, 
life itself must be surrendered, and " without the 
shedding of blood is no remission." 

Take the next step. Just because this life is so 
dear, He who loves us infinitely, and to whom it 
is dearer than to us, will be willing to lay down 
for us His own. He will not even wait for our 
consent ; but in the abundance of that unspeakable 



GOOD-FRIDAY. 197 

compassion, in the irresistible freedom of that good- 
ness, He will do it beforehand, — only asking of us 
that we will believe He has done it, and, accepting 
our pardon, be drawn by that faith into the same 
self-sacrificing spirit. Herein is love indeed. Suf- 
fering for our peace ! Sacrifice, not that our ser- 
vice may profit and pay Him, but that our trans- 
gression of a Perfect Law may be pardoned, and 
the noble life of disinterested goodness may be 
begotten in ourselves. Before, we had seen God as 
Creator, Providence, Ruler, and all the motives to 
obedience furnished by those characters had been 
offered, and had failed. His servants, the proph- 
ets, had come, and come often in vain. But now 
we see Him in the new, more wondrous, and more 
gracious character of Sacrifice. The last proof of 
tenderness is given. " Is not the mystic yearning 
of love expressed in words most purely thus : ' Let 
Me suffer for him ? ' " We want to feel that our 
God of infinite love feels that. Calvary is the full 
answer to that want. In the person of the Son 
He so comes down among us, and into us, as to 
suffer for us. We have a High Priest that can be 
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, — nay, 
takes those infirmities upon Him, bears our sick- 



198 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

nesses, is bruised for our iniquities, is delivered for 
our offences, dies that we may live. All the 
priestly offices are fulfilled. " Herein is love ; not 
that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent 
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." The 
atonement by Christ becomes the inmost and 
grandest power of the world. It is the one pecu- 
liar, characteristic, crowning, glorious truth of the 
Gospel. 

And then if you turn from what it does for us, 
as a redemption, to what it does within us, as an 
inspiration, the fruit of it is not less Divine. For 
it appeals directly to what is noblest, most gener- 
ous, most disinterested, in all the brave affections 
and aspirations of humanity. It rises up in har- 
mony with, and surmounts with its grandeur, all 
the heroic and martyr sacrifices of mankind. 
Mechanical and mercantile conceptions of salvation 
vanish before it. Right becomes more venerable ; 
love, more lovely ; charity, more beautiful. It was 
of charity that the Saviour suffered. His Cross 
teaches us, not that each one is to be looking out 
for a selfish salvation, but that self is to be forgot- 
ten in hearty consecration to Him, and in free ser- 
vice to our brethren. It carries us clear of the be- 



GOOD-FRIDAY. 199 

lfttling notions of escaping hell as a punishment or 
earning heaven as a reward. It makes the lofty 
6entiment of gratitude the mainspring of piety ; 
faith, the pure inspiration of righteousness ; love, 
the sacred secret of beneficence. We learn from 
the Redeemer, who gave Himself for us, to give 
ourselves for one another. We take up that Cross 
which signifies an atoning sacrifice, a voluntary, 
vicarious humiliation, a making of no reputation 
and becoming poor, a taking of the form of a ser- 
vant, and being made an offering for sin for others' 
sake. Henceforth we abhor sin for itself, for our 
brethren's sake, for Christ's sake, and not merely 
for its penal consequences. We love goodness, 
and are loyal to it for itself; not merely for its 
wages. We not only "admire philanthropy," 
but we " love men," as those for whom Christ has 
been willing to die. We cease longing for rest, 
and begin to have joy in God, in the " spirit of 
liberty," and in the eternal life begun. 

This is what is meant by Christ our Priest. This 
is that profound, penitential, sorrowing, unutter- 
able want in human souls which the Redeemer 
meets, and which, because He meets it, makes tho 
heart that is thus consciously set at liberty leap 



200 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

with gratitude and gladness to join the praises 
which give blessing and honor and glory to Christ. 
It will not be for any of us to say there is no need 
of a blessing so deep and a joy so great. You may 
say you have not yet felt the need of it ; and that 
— O pity of God ! — may be mournfully true. But 
close by you is some heart which feels that beside 
this want and its bitterness all the common griefs 
of mortality are trifles of the air : the want of rec- 
onciliation with the Father in heaven ; the want 
of an assured forgiveness ; the want of Christ and 
Him crucified. "Where that is once stirred and 
alive — and the first object of the New Testament 
is to stir it and make it alive, because that is the 
only way to peace and power — there you find a 
heart that only one word of earth or heaven can 
reach. You may tell it that its sorrow is all need- 
less and irrational, that all we have to do in this 
world is "to do right," or as near it as we can ; 
but it will only look back upon you with speech- 
less wonder. Do right ? What if, with the strong- 
est of apostles, I do not " find how " to do right ? 
What if the right seems to me too high and holy a 
thing, and too far off, that I should do it of myself? 
What if, all my life long, by doing or leaving un- 



GOOD-FKIDAY. 201 

done, I have come all too terribly short even of tl*9 
right I knew ? Then let me have, what the blessed, 
merciful Gospel gives me, a Redeemer ! Let me 
rest my heart upon the Cross ! Take not away 
my Lord ! 

I thirst, Tliou wounded Lamb of God, 
To wash me in Thy cleansing blood, 
To dwell within Thy wounds ; then pain 
Is sweet, and life or death is gain. 

How blest are they who still abide 
Close sheiter'd in Thy bleeding side ! 
Who life and strength from Thee derive, 
An* by Thee move, and in Thee live ! 

What are our works but sin and death, 
Till Thou Thy quick'ning spirit breathe ! 
Thou giv'st the power Thy grace to move — 
wondrous grace ! O boundless love ! 

Ah, Lord ! enlarge our scanty thought, 
To know the wonders Thou hast wrought 1 
Unloose our stammering tongues, to tell 
Thy love, immense, unsearchable ! 

FATHER of mercies, whose blessed Son was on this day 
crucified for us, the just for the unjust, to bring us to 
Thee, give us grace we beseech Thee to look in faith upon 
that Cross, and to crucify ourselves upon it to every sinful 



202 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

desire and unchristian temper. May we learn, in humble 
devotion to our Master's service, to take up our cross and deny 
ourselves, that we may follow Him. And grant that looking 
to His Passion we may be changed to His image as by the 
Spirit of the Lord, that all carnal affections may die in us, and 
that all things belonging to the Spirit may live and grow in 
us, so that we, being buried with Christ in His death, may 
crucify the old man and utterly abolish the whole body of sin ; 
through the same our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen, 



<8aBttx~€mn. 



So they went, and made the senulchre sure, sealing the 
stone, and setting a watch. 

And the women also, which came with Him from Galilee, 
followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body 
was laid. 

And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments ; and 
rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. 

Through the silence that falls, the night after 
the crucifixion, on the city of Jerusalem, and through 
the shadows that gather about the slopes of the 
Mount of Olives eastward and in the valley of 
Kedron between, we can see two groups of watchers 
before the sepulchre of Jesus. The contrast in 
their characters, purposes, and feelings, as toward 
the blessed and royal Figure that sleeps within, 
furnishes a practical theme for our contemplation 
this Easter-Even. 

The chief priests and pharisees had obtained an 
order from the Roman procurator, Pilate, for a 
guard of Roman soldiers ; and " they went and 



304 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone and set- 
ting a watch." The object was not to protect the 
place where the lifeless body of the Best Friend 
of all men, the greatest of all hearts that ever beat 
on earth, was lying, but to secure and vindicate 
their murder. Oh, what a stupendous fiction and 
phantom of their own deluded brain it was that 
they were setting these armed soldiers to keep! 
They feared that the disciples would come to steal 
the blessed body away ! The scheme was just what 
the ingenuity of the intellect is apt to devise where 
faith is shut out. The arm of the mightiest military 
empire on earth was in full play, but it was weaker 
than a straw. The real keepers of the tomb were 
angels from the right-hand of another throne. But 
the stone was sealed, and the guards paced to and 
fro in the Paschal moonlight, and did their best. 

Another part of the narrative shows us a different 
group, — " And there was Mary Magdalene and the 
other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre." 
Here were vigils of another kind. For what were 
these waiting and watching ? Only for some further 
opportunity of service ; only to testify with further 
offices of tenderness and love their devotion to Him 
who had healed, comforted, and saved them. They 



EASTEB-EVEN. 205 

could lean no longer upon the living arm of the 
Beloved One. But they could anoint Him, and 
once more let their tears fall on His feet. They 
waited till the Sabbath should be past for this ; 
waited obediently ; there was no restless running 
to and fro in the weakness of unbelief; no agita- 
tion ; no loud grief. They sat still ; they watched 
the eastern sky to catch the first pencil of the dawn 
toward Hebron ; their look turned to and fro, silent- 
ly, between the tomb and the heavens. "Weep- 
ing may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the 
morning." How clear and full their expectation 
was that this Third Day would bring back life to 
the dead, by some miracle greater than any they had 
6een done by Him, we are not told and cannot know. 
This we know, that the motive of their watching 
was a trusting, clinging, reverential, holy love. 

The two groups bring strikingly to mind the two 
clauses of a sentence at the conclusion of the Canti- 
cles, — " Love is strong as death ; jealousy is cruel 
as the grave ; " the one outlasts and outwatches 
death, the other is cruel even over the grave. 
We can hardly help finding an application here 
for the adjoining words of the same Bible-song : 
" Thou that dwellest in the gardens, set me as a 



206 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm. 
Make haste, my beloved, be thou like to a young 
hart upon the mountains of spices. Many waters 
cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown 
it." May we not say, then, there are two kinds of 
watching set before us, with veiy different motives 
and feelings lying under them and prompting 
them ? One will be the watching of self-will, pride, 
or formality — Roman self-will, pharisaic pride, the 
scribe's formality — all of one selfish, faithless 
spirit. Su w T e watch and so we work when, under 
the show of protecting the right, we are secretly 
contriving for and indulging ourselves. So we 
watch when we let the world become our tyrant, 
and we are its mercenaries doing its bidding, pacing 
to and fro on an unhallowed round of heartless 
frivolities, or surrendering to it the time, strength, 
zeal, which we know belong to Him who died for 
us and rose again. So we watch when we are in 
our hearts wishing the vigil were over, or are glad 
to escape from the hour and place of prayer, when 
we tire of the Church's service, or of the Lenten re- 
striction, or of the Sabbatic commandment, or of 
the homely work that must be done for the least of 
the Lord's children if it is to be done for Him. 



EASTER EVEN. 207 

But we would rather on this Easter Even join our- 
selves to the other company of watchers, sitting over 
against the sepulchre, looking for the first occasion to 
do some service more for their Master, " as they that 
watch for the morning ; " counting it a part of our 
faith in Christ to try to be like Christ. There are 
sacrifices of luxury, appearance, or comfort, which are 
to our Saviour's honor what the ointments of spices 
were to his body in the sepulchre. We have seen 
in these past weeks how His body is laid ; to how 
sad an extent His Church lies dead, and how much 
it needs the inbreathing of a new spirit, or rather 
the restoration of the original life, that it may go 
more swiftly and steadily on, conquering the sin 
and sorrow, cruelty and misery that are in the world 
This is the way for us, who would honor Christ 
among men, to watch for Him. Here is a resurrec- 
tion for which we can make ready. The least of 
us can bring something every day. Like Joseph of 
Arimathea, the rich man may do much. Like the 
widow in the temple, the poor may cast in what they 
have, and take the wealth of His love who loveth a 
cheerful giver. Like the women of the Kesurrec- 
tion morning we can, in supplications and interces- 
sions and communions, hold Jesus by the feet and 



208 HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

worship Him. And we who mourn continually for 
some that have departed hence in God's faith and 
fear, because this was not their Rest, can remember 
and praise Him, that those who sleep in Jesus 
God will bring through Paradise into glory, with 
Him who is the first-fruits of them that sleep. They 
will be Christ's at His coming. 

Not first the glad and then the sorrowful, — 
But first the sorrowful, and then the glad.; 

Tears for a day, — for earth of tears is full, 
Then we forget that we were ever sad. 

Not first the bright, and after that the dark, — 
But first the dark, and after that the bright ; 

First the thick cloud, and then the rainbow's arc, 
First the dark grave, then Resurrection light. 

'Tis first the night — stern night of storm and war — 
Long nights of heavy clouds and veiled skies ; 

Then the far sparkle of the Morning-Star, 
That bids the saints awake, and dawn arise. 

0LORD Jesus Christ, who by Thy death didst take away 
the sting of death ; grant unto us Thy servants so to fol- 
low in faith where Thou hast led the way, that we may at length 
fall asleep peacefully in Thee, and awaking up after Thy like- 
ness, may be satisfied with it ; through Thy mercy who livest 
with the Father and the Holy Ghost one God, world without 
end. Amen. 

THE END. 



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